The Hierarchy of the Others

[aDanceWithFlagons]

As an aside, I am thinking that Coldhands could be a fleshy white walker. That's it, no artificial flavors but lots of preservatives. Don't know if CH would be an escaped or transferred entity, or he made himself this way. But I do believe he is the spirit of a man, like the wws, inside a human body instead of an icy one.

Also sure he is old indeed. When putting down his elk, Coldhands speaks in the old tongue, and he also understands the speech of ravens and the common tongue. Quite the knowledgeable fellow.

And maybe a bit of of a twisted version of Charon.

[LmL]

As an aside, I am thinking that Coldhands could be a fleshy white walker. That's it, no artificial flavors but lots of preservatives. Don't know if CH would be an escaped or transferred entity, or he made himself this way. But I do believe he is the spirit of a man, like the wws, inside a human body instead of an icy one.

Also sure he is old indeed. When putting down his elk, Coldhands speaks in the old tongue, and he also understands the speech of ravens and the common tongue. Quite the knowledgeable fellow.

And maybe a bit of of a twisted version of Charon.

I had the same thoughts regarding Charon. This leads me to another totally random mystery - why did Symeon Star Eyes go to the wall to see hellhounds fight? The only other mention of hellhounds is one of the gargoyles on Maester Cressen's balcony, which is neither here nor there. Hellhounds don't really have a place in the story - but of course Hades has Cerberus, the three headed dog with a serpents tail which is known as the hellhound, and Charon, the ferryman, as his two main buddies. So put the Hellhounds at the wall (this really makes no practical sense) together with Coldhands as the ferryman and there might be something here. I def think Cerebrus was the inspiration for the three headed dragon.

[Voice]

I've been working my way through this thread. Lots of interesting ideas! This notion of a frosty web filled with cocooned children is absolutely chilling. I also cannot think of any instance of a child being raised as a wight but am not sure if they would be among the 'preserved'. In Old Nan's tales, children are fed to the Others' dead servants.

Thanks :cheers: yes, babes and children are conspicuously absent in the wighthood we've seen thus far. Strange considering Craster has been leaving babies in the wood, and the likelihood that he hasn't been the only person ever to do this.

The show kind of ruined the impact, as in the very first episode there's a young girl wight. But the books have no such youth among the cold blue eyed undead. Thistle was wighted, so at least they're not being sexist.

But age does seem to be an issue. Not a single 10 year old ever wandered off? Or froze to death? Hard to believe.

Then there's Bran's tears burning on his cheeks. He saw something terrifying north and north and north, and he isn't exactly a timid kid. He hangs out with a one eyed ancient that looks like a corpse, and an actual corpse cooked him supper around the campfire. He's always liked the scary stories. Now he is one.

Makes you wonder what could possibly have made him cry out when he looked into the heart of winter...

That, along with the lack of child-wights, or crawling baby-wights (mayhaps they are the ice spiders? lol... I'm truly sick)... it all seems to add up to a new level of depravity we've not yet seen.

What I do think is that Patchface's prophecy "the mermen feast on starfish soup and the serving men are crabs" fits the scenario of the Others drinking blood, the starfish soup being the blood, the serving crabs the spiders. I've been looking into this as a sideline to my work on the hierarchy and associates of the Others. There are many indications that the blood in question may be maiden's blood or virgin's blood. Perhaps this blood is mixed with something else. Soup suggests a liquid but soup also consists of a mixture of ingredients.

This is what Old Nan has to say:

She then goes on to say that the Others hunted with spiders:

Maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. If they feed their dead servants on the flesh of human children, what do they hunt maidens for?

This brings us to Ramsey - he hunts young women for sport. He enjoys raping, flaying and killing. My theory proposes that his hunting activities are analogous to the hunting practices of the Others. His bitches track down the victim much like the spiders stalk or track down victims for the Others. I don't recall Ramsey drinking blood but interestingly enough, his huge red horse goes by the name of Blood.

Another clue to this 'blood' comes from a rather unlikely place in one of Dany's chapters in AGOT.

Dany sees these items for sale at the docks in Qarth. Virgin's milk caught my attention. It's another of those things one is likely to dismiss. There is nothing like virgin's milk if we think of milk in terms of mother's milk. Shade of the evening is made from those black trees in Qarth that seem to be a counterpart to weirwood trees. I haven't looked into this in depth but aren't weirwood leaves shaped somewhat like 5-pointed stars? If so the leaves of the black trees could have a similar shape, bringing to mind the 'starfish' in Patchface's soup. Anyway this quote makes me wonder. It could be foreshadowing the 'nourishment' needed by the Others.

The virgin's milk or virgin's blood also reminds me of a bedding. Actually, it reminds me more of the tradition of a Lord's right to bed the newly wed maidens within his smallfolk. Roose enforces his rights when he rapes Ramsey's mother. He also happens to be out hunting when he encounters the girl. This right to the first night was abolished by Queen Alysane (was it her, not sure) 200 years ago but it's rumored that some lords still practice it. I don't think we have an explanation for this ancient tradition but the Targaryen queen obviously thought it must be abolished.

Any thoughts on this?

Very interesting. Thistle didn't give me the impression of being a virgin maid by any stretch of the imagination. She seemed more like a wise, toughened, spearwife.

Virgins and babes might be just the sort of thing that might sate the appetite of these vampiric creatures. It might be cliche, but there must be some reason for such stories to exist...and we've yet to see any wights that could accurately be described as resembling anything "virgin-like" either.

Another, sort of random, sort of related, thing I've often wondered about is the "kissed by fire" lot. I wonder if they really are "lucky." Maybe the Others do not bother with them. Maybe their red locks contradict the blue-ness of the Others. Old sayings like that tend to matter. Obviously as Jon points out "the words matter." They are more than "wind." Phrases like "the Others take you," and "kissed by fire...lucky" strike a chord with me.

[Voice]

As an aside, I am thinking that Coldhands could be a fleshy white walker. That's it, no artificial flavors but lots of preservatives. Don't know if CH would be an escaped or transferred entity, or he made himself this way. But I do believe he is the spirit of a man, like the wws, inside a human body instead of an icy one.

Also sure he is old indeed. When putting down his elk, Coldhands speaks in the old tongue, and he also understands the speech of ravens and the common tongue. Quite the knowledgeable fellow.

And maybe a bit of of a twisted version of Charon.

He's also quite knowledgeable of the Night Fort... In regards to our Coldhands anomaly, what do you think of this:

I used to group Beric in an odd men out group with Coldhands and Stoneheart. Obviously, there were some problems with that. Stoneheart is a woman, first of all. Coldhands is cold.

Beric is very unique. His blood is hot. It isn't a bubbling, smoking, black tar, like our corrupted shadowbinder Mel's blood. It is simply hot, like a living man's blood. While Coldhands exhibits signs of corpse-hood, blood coagulation and the smell of death, Beric exhibits scars. That means Beric is truly alive. He doesn't have a huge appetite, but he'll eat and drink wine on occasion. His body is functioning, rather than being maintained by magic alone. Magic has only returned the will to function to his body.

You guys know I'm big on classifying these guys, and I tend to split semantic hairs quite obsessively, but hey, someone has to... Anyway, this has led me to group Beric, and likely Stoneheart, much differently.

Beric's body lives again.

Coldhands' body does not.

We also learn from Beric that each time he returns he feels like less of himself... diminished... I think that is because he is only his living body. His brain retains his memories and identity, but it is fading because his soul no longer invigorates them. I propose his soul moved on with his first death.

If a kiss restores Jon, it will no longer be Jon. His blood will remain hot. He'll laugh with his brother on occasion, and share their table. But it will be hollow. He'll have a long face, grey eyes so dark they look almost black, and remember who he was, but he will not be Jon. Ghost will no longer be bound to him, nor like him much. And Ghost was conspicuously absent from his side when Jon had his armored in black ice dream.

Now, thankfully, that need not happen as GRRM has given us that "so you think he's dead, do you" quote.

So getting back to Coldhands and Stoneheart. Catelyn endured her corpse-hood for longer than Beric, so she decomposed a bit more, and her body was waterlogged. She shows signs of this, but I have a feeling her body is functioning again, just less well. Like someone who's been severely injured, and then only half-recovered. But her blood is undoubtedly hot, and her soul has undoubtedly moved on. She remembers her life, remembers who she was, because that data is stored in her brain tissue...as it was for Beric. But her soul has moved on. She was never a forgiving person, but now she's Lady Stoneheart. I'm surprised she never came up in my Bran's Vision thread as the third shadow at the Trident. Anyway, she's alive now. As her rasping voice implies the passage of air, and therefore, inhalation and exhalation.

Anyway, back to Coldhands. Magic alone maintains his body. His body is dead, moveable like a puppet on strings, but not living. His body cannot heal, nor even breathe. The smell of cold death clings to him. But, rather than being a living vessel without a soul, he is a dead vessel with a living soul. That honestly sounds like a preferable existence, strange as it may be.

This brings me to wights and white walkers, and it's something I've brought up before in reference to Ancient Others, hierarchical discussions, and the ice golem idea.

Wights are not living dead, only reanimated dead. Though characters assume they remembered LC Mormont, and wanted to attack him, I've been saying for a while that I think that assumption is wrong. The force than animates them knows who Mormont was, and wanted him dead. Wish granted. Anyway, wights are not like Beric and Stoneheart. Their bodies, while somewhat mobile, do not live again. They are not like Coldhands, their souls do not endure. In this way, they are far more like golems than popsicles are. Golems do not speak. Speaking of popsicles...

White walkers are not dead. Yet they do not live as we live. They are inhuman, another form of life. One, that does not depend on biological functions to thrive. In place of biological functions, they have magical innards. Being the unnatural, half-forgotten, demons of legend they are, they cannot sustain life doing all the same, fun ;) biological activities we are blessed with. In the stead, they are neverborn. How do neverborn propagate? Well, they clearly take no wives and father no sons, so they must harvest the living. Craster's cannot have been the only sons they've harvested. We've seen no dead babies in the wildling camps, and no infant wights...nor even child-wights.

So while Beric and Stoneheart are soul-less living flesh, wights are soul-less reanimated flesh, white walkers are living souls given full-grown sidhe, neverborn, bodies made of ice. Unlike Mel's shadowbabies, procured from a living man's seed, but like them, they stand as tall as a man and know how to swing a blade. Also, unlike them, they have physical bodies. Hell, they even have a soul. It just wasn't always their own :devil: This explains why they have identities, language, humor, and laughter. That's more than we can say of Lady Stoneheart.

Here's where my ideas may become less popular... The Others that first came in the long night, my Ancient Others, predate this process. They are not spoken of in the same manner as white walkers. They hunt using ice spiders. They were not called "shadows" as their thralls were. Rather than being vulnerable to a substance called dragonglass...they were vulnerable to a substance called dragonsteel. The 1993 letter makes it clear that it is they who raise the neverborn. The show may have spoiled this, but in any case, we have it from the author now:

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and and endless night is the Wall, and a handful of men in black called the Night's Watch. Their story will be the heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. The final battle will also draw together characters and plot threads left from the first two books and resolve all in one huge climax.

Now, the neverborn term makes a lot more sense. They are not merely ice golems. They are an entirely new form of life. Or, at least it used to be new...back when the Ancient Others first made them. In past heresies and my hierarchy thread I've laid out the military advantages of this process. Ancient Others command and gather intelligence. White walkers are field infantry (haha, infants!), and wights are at times cannon fodder, at others vanguard, and at others boobytraps. Ancient Others are least expendable...they cannot be replaced or recreated. White walkers are expendable, but not without inconvenience...gotta go collect another babe in the woods every time you make a new one. And wights are as numerous as corpses on a battlefield...toss a few dozen at the Fist, just for shits and giggles.

[LmL]

Okay, so check this out. This is getting ahead to future essays of mine, but it applies here, so I’ll try to sum up. The sun is fire that shines. Space is cold that is dark. The remaining moon of Planetos I believe is an Ice moon, much like Jupiter’s Europa (there’s a big mythology correlation to Europa). It’s a rocky core, ice and rock crust, and big oceans in between. This ice moon reflects light - so it is ice that shines. The moon that was destroyed in the Long Night cataclysm by Lightbringer the red comet (read the first two essays in my sig if this makes no sense to you, oh forum-goer) was a fire moon - like Jupiter’s Io - thats a core of pure magma and a very, very volcanic surface made up of volcanic basalt and other dark rock. So, this fire moon is fire that is dark.

Got all that? This is important. The Shadowlands by Asshai are the “heart of darkness.” It used to be a source of pure fire magic, I think, but was corrupted by the destruction of the fire moon. The point is that fire magic on Planetos is more shadow than light - you might even call it shadow fire or black fire. This idea is all over the Valyrian and Targaryen stuff - the black dragons all breathe black and red flame, the names of all the Valyrian swords - Blackfyre, Dark Sister (blatant fire moon reference), Nightfall (with a moonstone pommel), on and on... It’s not for nothing George makes a big deal out of the bastard branch of Targaryens called the Blackfyres. Fire magic is corrupt. So - Mel’s shadowbabies are her main magical power. Pure shadow.

White Walkers are “pale shadows.” The Others are always described in very luminescent terms, their swords especially. The heart of winter has a ring of light (the aurora borealis of course). You see what George has done here, to make things more interesting and less predictable - Ice seems to be the source of light on Planetos, and Fire magic, darkness. This fits with my idea that Azor Ahai was the Bloodstone Emperor, wielding “Lightbringer”, the red sword of heroes, which was actually darkbringer, and I believe it burned red and black like Drogon’s fire. Dawn, the sword, was made from a comet meteor, not a moon rock, and thus is more ice-aspected. That’s why it’s always described as pale as milk glass, the exact description for the Others’ swords. It is the real “Light”-bringer.

That make sense to you? It may inform how you view the shadow aspect of these various reanimated dead.

[Voice]

Okay, so check this out.

snip

That make sense to you? It may inform how you view the shadow aspect of these various reanimated dead.

It does. And yes, it does inform how I view them. Yet, the icy Others, first "came in the long night." Let me flip this on you a bit...

While GRRM said he was inspired by the idea of fire invigorating life, passion, love... in the actual novels, we find fire brings death, dread, and doom.

Ice, is equated with death, cold, the razor's edge... yet, in the actual novels, we find Ice also preserves, and the Starks, while undeniably connected to Ice and Winter, seem like an honorable and loveable group of First Men.

Where things get tricky, is magic.

Natural Fire brings light and warmth to the world. Fire Magic brings darkness.

Natural Ice forms when there is a lack of heat, which, is simply electrons energized by Light. Therefore, Ice comes from a lack of Light.

But Ice Magic, on the other end of the spectrum, brings light. A starry blue light that burns.

[remember what Renly said when he was stabbed by Mel and Stannis' shadowbaby: "Cold"]

In their natural forms, ice is found in cold darkness. Fire is found in warm light places. GRRM's lesson then, may simply be that magic is baaad... (can you hear Mr Garrison's voice? LOL)

Mel manipulates us into security by playing into our natural ideas of Fire. Since time immemorial, it has provided warmth and light against the cold and dark. Yet, we know better than to trust her words. She brings only shadow into the world. And shadow begets ice (like Europa).

[LmL]

It does. And yes, it does inform how I view them. Yet, the icy Others, first "came in the long night." Let me flip this on you a bit...

While GRRM said he was inspired by the idea of fire invigorating life, passion, love... in the actual novels, we find fire brings death, dread, and doom.

Ice, is equated with death, cold, the razor's edge... yet, in the actual novels, we find Ice also preserves, and the Starks, while undeniably connected to Ice and Winter, seem like an honorable and loveable group of First Men.

Where things get tricky, is magic.

Natural Fire brings light and warmth to the world. Fire Magic brings darkness.

Natural Ice forms when there is a lack of heat, which, is simply electrons energized by Light. Therefore, Ice comes from a lack of Light.

But Ice Magic, on the other end of the spectrum, brings light. A starry blue light that burns.

[remember what Renly said when he was stabbed by Mel and Stannis' shadowbaby: "Cold"]

In their natural forms, ice is found in cold darkness. Fire is found in warm light places. GRRM's lesson then, may simply be that magic is baaad... (can you hear Mr Garrison's voice? LOL)

Mel manipulates us into security by playing into our natural ideas of Fire. Since time immemorial, it has provided warmth and light against the cold and dark. Yet, we know better than to trust her words. She brings only shadow into the world. And shadow begets ice (like Europa).

That is very well put my friend. I appreciate the clarification – natural fire being bright, but magical fire being dark – I think you might have put your finger right on it. I'm going to think about this more, but initially I like this very much and it seems right. The lesson does seem to be that magic is baaaaad, mkay?

[LmL]

Perhaps "unnatural" is a better way to put it

Edit: yes, we should definitely use the word unnatural, and not bad or evil, because those words always set people off – even though George has clearly defined them in terms of duality and Yon and Yang, if you use those actual words people lose their mind.

[Voice]

Mkay.

[Voice]

LOL... but yes... "unnatural" ..."inhuman" ..."in-natural?"

Perhaps anti- is a better prefix. Anti-matter, anti-fire, anti-human, anti-ice, anti-nature...?

[Voice]

Perhaps "unnatural" is a better way to put it

Edit: yes, we should definitely use the word unnatural, and not bad or evil, because those words always set people off – even though George has clearly defined them in terms of duality and Yon and Yang, if you use those actual words people lose their mind.

You're 100% right on that edit. People don't like hearing good and bad. Unnatural is better.

I've talked a lot about Yin and Yang in Heresy. The Wall seems to be the line between. Black Ravens arriving to the Wall to join the Watch from the South, White Ravens flying from the North, marking the seasons.

[Evolett]

Thanks :cheers: yes, babes and children are conspicuously absent in the wighthood we've seen thus far. Strange considering Craster has been leaving babies in the wood, and the likelihood that he hasn't been the only person ever to do this.

The show kind of ruined the impact, as in the very first episode there's a young girl wight. But the books have no such youth among the cold blue eyed undead. Thistle was wighted, so at least they're not being sexist.

But age does seem to be an issue. Not a single 10 year old ever wandered off? Or froze to death? Hard to believe.

Then there's Bran's tears burning on his cheeks. He saw something terrifying north and north and north, and he isn't exactly a timid kid. He hangs out with a one eyed ancient that looks like a corpse, and an actual corpse cooked him supper around the campfire. He's always liked the scary stories. Now he is one.

Makes you wonder what could possibly have made him cry out when he looked into the heart of winter...

That, along with the lack of child-wights, or crawling baby-wights (mayhaps they are the ice spiders? lol... I'm truly sick)... it all seems to add up to a new level of depravity we've not yet seen.

Very interesting. Thistle didn't give me the impression of being a virgin maid by any stretch of the imagination. She seemed more like a wise, toughened, spearwife.

Virgins and babes might be just the sort of thing that might sate the appetite of these vampiric creatures. It might be cliche, but there must be some reason for such stories to exist...and we've yet to see any wights that could accurately be described as resembling anything "virgin-like" either.

Another, sort of random, sort of related, thing I've often wondered about is the "kissed by fire" lot. I wonder if they really are "lucky." Maybe the Others do not bother with them. Maybe their red locks contradict the blue-ness of the Others. Old sayings like that tend to matter. Obviously as Jon points out "the words matter." They are more than "wind." Phrases like "the Others take you," and "kissed by fire...lucky" strike a chord with me.

Why do you bring up Thistle in this regard? It's 3 in the morning where I am right now so thinking is difficult... I have an explanation for 'kissed by fire' which forms part of another idea I've been tossing around. I've just sent Lucifer a pm in this regard because it might be of help in his Coldhand's quest. Will catch up again on the morrow.

[Voice]

No worries there Evolett. I needs to get gone myself. Be back in a few...

[Voice]

Perhaps "unnatural" is a better way to put it

Edit: yes, we should definitely use the word unnatural, and not bad or evil, because those words always set people off – even though George has clearly defined them in terms of duality and Yon and Yang, if you use those actual words people lose their mind.

Just thinking... what could be more "natural" than "those who sing the song of earth"...?

[Voice]

Why do you bring up Thistle in this regard? It's 3 in the morning where I am right now so thinking is difficult... I have an explanation for 'kissed by fire' which forms part of another idea I've been tossing around. I've just sent Lucifer a pm in this regard because it might be of help in his Coldhand's quest. Will catch up again on the morrow.

Until the morrow, but I just remembered I think you said over on your thread that you're still reading the books...You may not have gotten to Thistle yet. She pops up in the ADWD prologue.

[Voice]

This came up in a private conversation and I had to share it here:

From me:

They can do things with Cold and Ice that we can't even imagine. I believe they are able to do this not because 'the Cold' is an animating force, but because 'the Cold' is their native habitat. The same is true for us. Just look at all the weapons we've made from our native habitat, from swords to bombs. As the winds of winter blow, and the land grows cold and frozen, their habitat grows, making them stronger further south. I picture this like a web of frost, a huge snowflake, spreading ever southward (or outward from Winterfell)... They leave no tracks upon it, like we leave none upon the sidewalk.

Private reply:

Hmm. So are you saying that these conditions must be met in order for the autoimmune response to spread? Are they not able to be more prominent in the south because there are fewer weirwoods there? Just curious, maybe they need a combination of both?

My response:

I don't think the Others require the presence of, nor lack of, weirwoods. But I do think they require frozen "dead lands" upon which to thrive. That "deadness" is part of the autoimmune response.

At one time, the response would likely have been a harsh purification and restoration of balance. Not any longer. While they began as antibodies, they have been militarized and turned into a plague. Rather than usher in balance, they will destroy the body itself like a cancer.

This sort of spoils another theory I've been keeping under my hat, but we are told that the Others seek to destroy all we would call "life" and that they hate everything with hot blood in its veins. Rather than draw strength from weirwoods, or attempt to cut them all down as they ride down on their winds of winter, they will simply destroy the foodsource of weirwoods: life... blood... bone.

Thus they achieve the same result: the weirwoods die and petrify.

[LmL]

Do you think this explains the petrified weirwoods on Nagga's Hill?

[Voice]

Nagga's Hill and Raventree both come to mind. Neither are very far from the Neck. We've already heard of tell of dead things in the water. It isn't hard to imagine that whole region being frozen solid.

I'm of the mind that the Last Hero ventured forth from about this area, seeking out the cotf that once lived in what is now Winterfell, and the sidhe hill that later became the crypts beneath it, during the last long night. Once the magics needed were obtained, and the Others sent into retreat, the Wall was built at the northern boundary of the territory they won back...placing "Winterfell" as the epicenter of Winter's Fall.

This time around, it seems that Winter is emanating from Winterfell itself. Have you read redriver's thread?

I think Winterfell is the key or the goal itself, for both our Natural forces, and our Unnatural ones...

[LmL]

Nagga's Hill and Raventree both come to mind. Neither are very far from the Neck. We've already heard of tell of dead things in the water. It isn't hard to imagine that whole region being frozen solid.

I'm of the mind that the Last Hero ventured forth from about this area, seeking out the cotf that once lived in what is now Winterfell, and the sidhe hill that later became the crypts beneath it, during the last long night. Once the magics needed were obtained, and the Others sent into retreat, the Wall was built at the northern boundary of the territory they won back...placing "Winterfell" as the epicenter of Winter's Fall.

This time around, it seems that Winter is emanating from Winterfell itself. Have you read redriver's thread?

I think Winterfell is the key or the goal itself, for both our Natural forces, and our Unnatural ones...

I’m going to dive into that thread in a second, but I totally agree that Winterfell is where winter fell. Shocker! People miss the right out in the open stuff sometimes. Why is the Targaryen sword named blackfyre, and why does their main dragon, Balerion, breathe black and red flame? Because fire magic is black, corrupted, and Azor Ahai was nobody’s friend. Light bringer, red sword of anti-heroes, brought darkness. Anyway. Yes, Winterfell. I agree with the idea that Others made it pretty far south - the neck makes sense - and that the Wall was made after taking a bunch of land from them. The Starks originated in the reach, I believe, with Brandon the son of Garth, and only came to live up north after the war for the Dawn. That’s why there has to be a Stark in Winterfell, ready to wield dark light bringer against the Others when they come again. Because Ned’s sword wasn’t the original Ice - the original Ice was a white sword, as one might think. Ned’s sword... well... it’s not 400 years old from Valyria, methinks. I do think Azor Ahai’s red sword was the dragonsteel of the LH - I think Azor Ahai, as the Bloodstone Emperor, came to Westeros (the evidence is abundant) and fought the Battle at Battle Isle. His sword came into the hands of whoever was the Last Hero (possibly the BSE himself), and was sent north to fight the Others. Take the fire magic menace and throw it at the ice magic menace - the same as people expect with Dany’s dragons. I’m leaking stuff from future essays here, so I can’t list all the supporting evidence, but I feel pretty confident in what I am saying. The red fire sword of Azor Ahai was the dragonsteel of the Last Hero, and when he was done, that sword was left at Winterfell to be ready when it’s needed again.

Now, Brienne, the Evenstar, has one half of Lightbringer and is busy sacrificing people to weirwoods with it, and if she kills again in Stoneheart’s lair, the weirwoods will drink that blood too - just as Ned always washed his sword in the pool at Winterfell, which might be a melted Ice Dragon. Just saying.

oops, did I just drop the mic? :cool4:

[Voice]

I’m going to dive into that thread in a second, but I totally agree that Winterfell is where winter fell. Shocker! People miss the right out in the open stuff sometimes. Why is the Targaryen sword named blackfyre, and why does their main dragon, Balerion, breathe black and red flame? Because fire magic is black, corrupted, and Azor Ahai was nobody’s friend. Light bringer, red sword of anti-heroes, brought darkness.

You'll hear no argument from me. Funny how often I have to justify my Winterfell being where winter fell ideas... Oh well.

One need only look at Mel and Stannis to see AA is no one's friend. Stannis' closest confidant is sapping away his life force to create shadow assassins, and Stannis cut the fingers from his one true friend before her wondrous influence.

Anyway. Yes, Winterfell. I agree with the idea that Others made it pretty far south - the neck makes sense - and that the Wall was made after taking a bunch of land from them. The Starks originated in the reach, I believe, with Brandon the son of Garth, and only came to live up north after the war for the Dawn. That’s why there has to be a Stark in Winterfell, ready to wield dark light bringer against the Others when they come again. Because Ned’s sword wasn’t the original Ice - the original Ice was a white sword, as one might think. Ned’s sword... well... it’s not 400 years old from Valyria, methinks. I do think Azor Ahai’s red sword was the dragonsteel of the LH - I think Azor Ahai, as the Bloodstone Emperor, came to Westeros (the evidence is abundant) and fought the Battle at Battle Isle. His sword came into the hands of whoever was the Last Hero (possibly the BSE himself), and was sent north to fight the Others. Take the fire magic menace and throw it at the ice magic menace - the same as people expect with Dany’s dragons. I’m leaking stuff from future essays here, so I can’t list all the supporting evidence, but I feel pretty confident in what I am saying. The red fire sword of Azor Ahai was the dragonsteel of the Last Hero, and when he was done, that sword was left at Winterfell to be ready when it’s needed again.

I think we can at least rule out that the Last Hero's sword, which Samwell finds a historical (secular) account of, is one and the same as Ice. Dragonsteel would seem wrongly-named as "Ice."

That alone, is quite telling. Isn't it?

The ancestral sword of the Winter is Coming house at Winter-Fell was not dragonsteel.

Then, there's the story of Night's King, from Bran IV ASOS:

She shook her head. "No. It's a sheer drop, and the ice is so smooth . . . I might be able to make the descent if I had a good rope and an axe to chop out handholds, but . . ."

". . . but not us," Jojen finished.

"No," his sister agreed. "Are you sure this is the place you saw in your dream? Maybe we have the wrong castle."

"No. This is the castle. There is a gate here."

Yes, thought Bran, but it's blocked by stone and ice.

As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan's stories, the tale of Night's King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. "And that was the fault in him," she would add, "for all men must know fear." A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

"Some say he was a Bolton," Old Nan would always end. "Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down." She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. "He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room."

No, Bran thought, but he walked in this castle, where we'll sleep tonight. He did not like that notion very much at all. Night's King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it's getting dark.

Funny, I never noticed how much this sounds like Rhaegar taking Lyanna to some faraway fort, and the Stark of Winterfell joining forces with a wild brute of a lord to bring him down... but I digress...

Old Nan points out the inaccuracies of other storytellers in the final paragraph, then delares quite emphatically that "He was a Stark..." That much, at least, is not a mystery. His first name may have been forbidden, but his House seems well-known.

So, we know that Night's King was a Stark, and the ancestral sword of House Stark was not dragonsteel and was named Ice. It seems a likely name for a pale, crystalline sword, rather than one made of dark steel.

There are but 5 mentions of milkglass in all the series (including the novellas and world book):

1. AGOT Dany III

"The Dothraki sea," Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge. Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads, only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. "It's so green," she said.

"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end."

That thought gave Dany the shivers. "I don't want to talk about that now," she said. "It's so beautiful here, I don't want to think about everything dying.

2. AGOT Eddard X

"Ned's wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three.

"And now it begins," said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.

"No," Ned said with sadness in his voice. "Now it ends." As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. "Eddard!" she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

3. ACOK Tyrion IV

Pycelle moved so slowly that Tyrion had time to finish his egg and taste the plums—overcooked and watery, to his taste—before the sound of wings prompted him to rise. He spied the raven, dark in the dawn sky, and turned briskly toward the maze of shelves at the far end of the room.

The maester's medicines made an impressive display; dozens of pots sealed with wax, hundreds of stoppered vials, as many milkglass bottles, countless jars of dried herbs, each container neatly labeled in Pycelle's precise hand. An orderly mind, Tyrion reflected, and indeed, once you puzzled out the arrangement, it was easy to see that every potion had its place. And such interesting things. He noted sweetsleep and nightshade, milk of the poppy, the tears of Lys, powdered greycap, wolfsbane and demon's dance, basilisk venom, blindeye, widow's blood . . .

Standing on his toes and straining upward, he managed to pull a small dusty bottle off the high shelf. When he read the label, he smiled and slipped it up his sleeve.

4. ASOS Samwell I

When he opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.

Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."

"Obsidian." Sam struggled to his knees. "Dragonglass, they call it. Dragonglass. Dragon glass." He giggled, and cried, and doubled over to heave his courage out onto the snow.

5. AFFC Arya I

"Sealords," said Yorko. "The Isle of the Gods is farther on. See? Six bridges down, on the right bank. That is the Temple of the Moonsingers."

It was one of those that Arya had spied from the lagoon, a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk glass windows showed all the phases of the moon. A pair of marble maidens flanked its gates, tall as the Sealords, supporting a crescent-shaped lintel.

Beyond it stood another temple, a red stone edifice as stern as any fortress. Atop its great square tower a fire blazed in an iron brazier twenty feet across, whilst smaller fires flanked its brazen doors. "The red priests love their fires," Yorko told her. "The Lord of Light is their god, red R'hllor."

Pycelle's chambers and the Temple of the Moonsingers are a bit distant in terms of relevance and reference, at first glance... But, Pycelle keeps death in those milkglass bottles, and the Moonsingers' Temple sounds like just the sort of place Night's King's pale woman might study her sorceries (a parallel with Mel's Red Temple). If not literally, it at least clearly evokes imagery of her appearance, with skin like the moon itself.

The other three quotes clearly evoke Others. Ghost grass covering the world, for me, points to far greater numbers of white walkers than we have seen thus far. Jorah says, "It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned." That sounds a whole lot like our author's 1993 letter:

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life."

Arthur Dayne's sword in the next quote sounds like it's made of a far more likely substance to bear the name "Ice" than a Valyrian or dragon-steel weapon. As we know, instead of normal or Valyrian steel, it sounds a lot like this weapon:

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

On this train of thought, there is an-other sword that is said to be "sharper than any razor. In fact, there is only one other sword ever described as "sharper than any razor" throughout the entire series (again, including the novellas and world book). Can you guess which?

"Here, you!" an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back, cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good, there were too many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again. Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa screaming.

Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any razor. Ice, she thought, he has Ice! Her tears streamed down her face, blinding her.

And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have fallen if he hadn't held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled beard and rotten teeth. "Don't look!" a thick voice snarled at her.

This is from Arya V AGOT. In this passage, we've come full circle, and Eddard is meeting the same fate as Gared, who escaped a blade that was "sharper than any razor" in the prologue, only to lose his head to Ice in the following chapter. Now, Eddard shares the same fate, at the same edge, that is "sharper than any razor."

And now, Sam, in the remaining reference to "milkglass" above, has just broken the spell that kept Ser Puddles held together. Why don't they bring the pale longsword back to Castle Black as proof?!

Well, I think the reason is the sword evaporated with the owner. In the case of the Original Ice, I believe the original owner was Night's King, and, that he was never killed...

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

No mention of his death. Or even his exile. It is implied that he was cast down in some fashion, yet it isn't in any way mentioned in the story. Quite curious.

Now, Brienne, the Evenstar, has one half of Lightbringer and is busy sacrificing people to weirwoods with it, and if she kills again in Stoneheart’s lair, the weirwoods will drink that blood too - just as Ned always washed his sword in the pool at Winterfell, which might be a melted Ice Dragon. Just saying.

oops, did I just drop the mic? :cool4:

LOL!!! hahahaaa

That got me laughing, but it remains brilliant.

So this would be the "Light" "lightbringer," made of valyrian (dragon?) steel, then... dark ripples and all. As opposed to the "Dark" "lightbringer" made of a blade that shimmers like milkglass.... :cool4:

***drops pale microphone encrusted in dry ice... crackling amid salt and smoke***