Heresy 165

[Voice]

I don't think she actually saw them, nor did they actually see her.

She's seeing a representation of them (Bran with a "wolf's face"). She's not actually opening a portal and actually looking into the cave and seeing them, otherwise Bran would be, well Bran. Nor is Bloodraven following her back through her vision and seeing her. He's seeing her through his agents (his "thousand red eyes").

So she didn't see them and he didn't see her, but he saw her and she saw them. Got it. :)

[Voice]

Wanted to thank the Voice for allowing me to vent some steam. If nothing else came out of our little exchange is that the subject of "glass candles" has never really been totally vetted through Heresey. Certainly glass candles have been discussed from time to time and those (Marwyn, Quaithe, etc.) who might have attempted to use them; but never in Heresey Project. I'm sure Black Crow will correct me.

Anyway, trying to return to your normal programming schedule, I noticed that an old familiar posted earlier today:

Feather...welcome back.... :cheers:

:cheers: to Feather, and to free WiFi... And to the western continent for cooperating with tapatalk again

[Rhaegarslance]

The last Heresy had a very interesting quote in it regarding the wakening of magic that seemingly applies to glass candles but has been missed (or at least I've never seen anyone discuss this)

“Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets.”

Quaithe says that 6 months ago this man scaling ladders of fire could "scarcely wake fire from dragonglass" as if that was a relatively easy thing to do for a fire mage but was a task with which he personally struggled. This makes it sound like dragonglass burns easily, or at least fire can come from it easily, then if Quaithe is scoffing at this man's struggle to do so.

Glass candles seem to be made of obsidian, which is another word for dragonglass. If it's so easy to wake fire from dragonglass according to Quaithe, then why haven't the candles been burning before now? Quaithe makes it sound like any novice fire mage could have lit a glass candle with this remark that waking fire from dragonglass is simple.

In which case it doesn't sound like the glass candles burning is some new long lost power that only returned with the dragons... just a matter of not trying the right methods, which a fire mage would know how to do if they can easily wake fire from dragonglass

[Rhaegarslance]

So she didn't see them and he didn't see her, but he saw her and she saw them. Got it. :)

Lol well from what I gathered it sounding like you were saying that she's actually seeing them when she looks into her flames. I'm just saying that she's only seeing representations of them instead. Doesn't mean that they're not accurate representations or anything, but it's not like her flames act as a camera giving her a live recording of what's happening/happened/will happen when she looks into the flames.

Bloodraven on the other hand actually would be seeing Mel if he sees her seeing as his sources of information are living beings. A crow actually would see Mel because it actually has eyes.

[Mace Cooterian]

* snip *

Sure, but was anyone watching before Bloodraven? Bran was reached out to almost the moment his gifts began awakening, but BR was nearly 80 by the time he became a GS, and there's only a little more than 60 total CotF in BR's cave. All of this, as well as the "last greenseer" moniker are suggestive of the idea that magic's return is still relatively recent (I would consider BR's disappearance to be recent history).

The fact that magic had faded to the stuff of legend south of the Wall, and that the Stark's gifts all reawakened at the same time would imply that the coming of the direwolves was a significant event, in much the same way Dany's pyre to the east was a turning point for magic.

* snip *

I'm finding this somewhat intriguing regarding 60 total CoTF in the cave. Did not realize that this had been fully surveyed.

Side note...I really didn't expect to find myself her at this time of the evening. Had anticipated the comet passing my castle and "punani magic" settling in (shout out to JNR). I am still here and alas must not be "The Hammer that was Promised".

[Matthew.]

I'm finding this somewhat intriguing regarding 60 total CoTF in the cave. Did not realize that this had been fully surveyed.

It's an observation from a Bran chapter, where he notes that the cave has more than three score living Singers, and the bones of thousands of dead. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that's an accurate reflection of the total population in the cave, nor that it's the only inhabited cave in Westeros, but taken with Leaf's comments about the decline of the CotF, I wouldn't be surprised if that's an accurate reflection of how close they are to extinction.

[Voice]

Lol well from what I gathered it sounding like you were saying that she's actually seeing them when she looks into her flames. I'm just saying that she's only seeing representations of them instead. Doesn't mean that they're not accurate representations or anything, but it's not like her flames act as a camera giving her a live recording of what's happening/happened/will happen when she looks into the flames.

Bloodraven on the other hand actually would be seeing Mel if he sees her seeing as his sources of information are living beings. A crow actually would see Mel because it actually has eyes.

"Fire is a living thing," the red woman told him, when he asked her to teach him how to see the future in the flames. "It is always moving, always changing . . . like a book whose letters dance and shift even as you try to read them. It takes years of training to see the shapes beyond the flames, and more years still to learn to tell the shapes of what will be from what may be or what was. Even then it comes hard, hard. You do not understand that, you men of the sunset lands."

Davos VI ASOS

Methinks Mel is seeing Bran currently at BR's side, BR's thousand eyes, and Bran howling at the Red Comet:

If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song, he thought wistfully. In his wolf dreams, he could race up the sides of mountains, jagged icy mountains taller than any tower, and stand at the summit beneath the full moon with all the world below him, the way it used to be.

"Oooo," Bran cried tentatively. He cupped his hands around his mouth and lifted his head to the comet. "Ooooooooooooooooooo, ahooooooooooooooo," he howled. It sounded stupid, high and hollow and quavering, a little boy's howl, not a wolf's. Yet Summer gave answer, his deep voice drowning out Bran's thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran haroooed again. They howled together, last of their pack.

ACOK Bran I

We know now, that eventually he did race up the side of an icy mountain :devil:

I'm finding this somewhat intriguing regarding 60 total CoTF in the cave. Did not realize that this had been fully surveyed.

Side note...I really didn't expect to find myself her at this time of the evening. Had anticipated the comet passing my castle and "punani magic" settling in (shout out to JNR). I am still here and alas must not be "The Hammer that was Promised".

Sounds like a cold night on the Wall ser.

It's an observation from a Bran chapter, where he notes that the cave has more than three score living Singers, and the bones of thousands of dead. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that's an accurate reflection of the total population in the cave, nor that it's the only inhabited cave in Westeros, but taken with Leaf's comments about the decline of the CotF, I wouldn't be surprised if that's an accurate reflection of how close they are to extinction.

Found it, Bran III ADWD. The bones of thousands dead is to be expected though, given any long term settlement. Interesting passage.

Under the hill they still had food to eat. A hundred kinds of mushrooms grew down here. Blind white fish swam in the black river, but they tasted just as good as fish with eyes once you cooked them up. They had cheese and milk from the goats that shared the caves with the singers, even some oats and barleycorn and dried fruit laid by during the long summer. And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender.

The caves were timeless, vast, silent. They were home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extended far below the hollow hill. "Men should not go wandering in this place," Leaf warned them. "The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years."

Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer. They were small compared to men, as a wolf is smaller than a direwolf. That does not mean it is a pup. They had nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots, and large ears that could hear things that no man could hear. Their eyes were big too, great golden cat's eyes that could see down passages where a boy's eyes saw only blackness. Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails.

[Voice]

On the subject of Dragonglass Candles...

Consider this

The candle was unpleasantly bright. There was something queer about it. The flame did not flicker, even when Archmaester Marwyn closed the door so hard that papers blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange to colors too. Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring. The candle itself was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black.

Samwell V AFFC

And this

"No, boy," the child said. "Behind you." She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.

Bran II ADWD

[Mace Cooterian]

Thanks to Mattthew and the Voice for correcting me on the question about the number of CoTF in the cave:

It's an observation from a Bran chapter, where he notes that the cave has more than three score living Singers, and the bones of thousands of dead. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that's an accurate reflection of the total population in the cave, nor that it's the only inhabited cave in Westeros, but taken with Leaf's comments about the decline of the CotF, I wouldn't be surprised if that's an accurate reflection of how close they are to extinction.

Found it, Bran III ADWD. The bones of thousands dead is to be expected though, given any long term settlement. Interesting passage.

Under the hill they still had food to eat. A hundred kinds of mushrooms grew down here. Blind white fish swam in the black river, but they tasted just as good as fish with eyes once you cooked them up. They had cheese and milk from the goats that shared the caves with the singers, even some oats and barleycorn and dried fruit laid by during the long summer. And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender.

The caves were timeless, vast, silent. They were home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extended far below the hollow hill. "Men should not go wandering in this place," Leaf warned them. "The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years."

Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer. They were small compared to men, as a wolf is smaller than a direwolf. That does not mean it is a pup. They had nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots, and large ears that could hear things that no man could hear. Their eyes were big too, great golden cat's eyes that could see down passages where a boy's eyes saw only blackness. Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails.

[Mace Cooterian]

On the subject of Dragonglass Candles...

The candle was unpleasantly bright. There was something queer about it. The flame did not flicker, even when Archmaester Marwyn closed the door so hard that papers blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange to colors too. Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring. The candle itself was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black.

* snip *

Four colors standpout in that passage (and yet the flame did not flicker):

White (as fresh as fallen snow)

Yellow (shone like gold)

Red (turned to flame)

Black (shadows into the holes of world)

White and Red are fairly straight forward (WW and R'Holler; perhaps dragons). Does anyone have thoughts on Yellow (please don't say Casterly Rock) or Black (I don't think Mel's Stannis baby counts as the shadow).

[Voice]

Yellow is the hard one... I'm thinkin'...

White (as fresh as fallen snow)

• Ice
  
• the Winds of Winter
  
• Weirwoods
  

Yellow (shone like gold)

• the Sun (end of long night), sunlight, natural fire?
  
• The golden old "Age of Heroes"? He went to sleep with his head full of knights in gleaming armor, fighting with swords that shone like starfire Bran III ACOK.
  
• Dothraki?
  
• Viserys' crown?
  
• Daario Naharis? LOL Daario Naharis rode up, arakh in hand. "Shall I cut that off for you and stuff it down his mouth, Your Grace?" His tooth shone gold amidst the blue of his forked beard. Dany V ASOS
  
• The Cheesemonger? LOL... Beneath loose garments of flame-colored silk, rolls of fat jiggled as he walked. Gemstones glittered on every finger, and his man had oiled his forked yellow beard until it shone like real gold. Dany I AGOT
  
• Seriously though, maybe it's just the power of money?
  

Red (turned to flame)

• Blood and Fire
  
• The Red Comet
  
• Dragons
  
• Dragonlords
  

Black (shadows into the holes of world)

• Mel
  
• Asshai
  
• shadowbinding
  

Edit: There's no mention of blue, but I would venture to guess that blue would burn like starlight

[TheSmallOther]

Lol well from what I gathered it sounding like you were saying that she's actually seeing them when she looks into her flames. I'm just saying that she's only seeing representations of them instead. Doesn't mean that they're not accurate representations or anything, but it's not like her flames act as a camera giving her a live recording of what's happening/happened/will happen when she looks into the flames.

Bloodraven on the other hand actually would be seeing Mel if he sees her seeing as his sources of information are living beings. A crow actually would see Mel because it actually has eyes.

Ah, I believe Mel sees what R'hllor sees. But not at the same time, i.e., it's not an online translation but more of recording of things that were, things that are, and things that have not yet come to pass (which are also tampered in some cases).

[Black Crow]

This one has gotten off to a fine start when I was sleeping, so the usual apologies for not responding individually

On the matter of numbers, notwithstanding Bran's count we have no way of knowing if those six score living were the total population or for that matter whether any or all the bones belonged to their ancestors. Gendel's children after all are hungry and there may have been greater dangers than underground rivers. Moreover there is no reason thus far to suppose that the cave is the only refuge of a dying race and that there are not others besides. After all in considering Craster's boys we saw six in the prologue and one later [who for all we know may have been one of the original six] yet there is a confident expectation that there are an awful lot more of them out there as yet unseen, so it would seem a touch rash to conclude that those encountered by Bran represent the sum total of their population.

[Black Crow]

On the subject of Dragonglass Candles...

Consider this

The candle was unpleasantly bright. There was something queer about it. The flame did not flicker, even when Archmaester Marwyn closed the door so hard that papers blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange to colors too. Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring. The candle itself was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black.

Samwell V AFFC

And this

"No, boy," the child said. "Behind you." She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.

Bran II ADWD

I'm very much inclined, alas, to take both passages exactly as they are written. Those are not the colours of the candlelight but rather how those colours in the room appear. Compare the warm "ruddy glow" of the cave by firelight, or for that matter by ordinary candle-light, and then consider how everything would appear under a fluorescent strip light.

[Black Crow]

Oh, and a welcome back to Feather :commie: :commie: :commie:

[Voice]

I'm very much inclined, alas, to take both passages exactly as they are written. Those are not the colours of the candlelight but rather how those colours in the room appear. Compare the warm "ruddy glow" of the cave by firelight, or for that matter by ordinary candle-light, and then consider how everything would appear under a fluorescent strip light.

It's a long shot, admittedly. But Leaf waves that thing around an awful lot, even while Bran and company are being attacked by wights, Leaf is waving around that torch like a desperate beacon. It never goes out.

And both flames bring about noticeably stark contrasts in color.

Bran II ADWD

The world moved dizzily around him. White trees, black sky, red flames, everything was whirling, shifting, spinning. He felt himself stumbling. He could hear Hodor screaming, "Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor." A cloud of ravens was pouring from the cave, and he saw a little girl with a torch in hand, darting this way and that. For a moment Bran thought it was his sister Arya … madly, for he knew his little sister was a thousand leagues away, or dead. And yet there she was, whirling, a scrawny thing, ragged, wild, her hair atangle. Tears filled Hodor's eyes and froze there.

...

The next he knew, he was lying on a bed of pine needles beneath a dark stone roof. The cave. I'm in the cave. His mouth still tasted of blood where he'd bitten his tongue, but a fire was burning to his right, the heat washing over his face, and he had never felt anything so good. Summer was there, sniffing round him, and Hodor, soaking wet. Meera cradled Jojen's head in her lap. And the Arya thing stood over them, clutching her torch.

“The snow,” Bran said. “It fell on me. Buried me.”

“Hid you. I pulled you out.” Meera nodded at the girl. “It was her who saved us, though. The torch … fire kills them.”

“Fire burns them. Fire is always hungry.”

That was not Arya’s voice, nor any child’s. It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart. Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.

...

"When I am needing one." She waved her torch toward the black crack in the back wall of the cave. "Our way is down. You must come with me now."

...

The child went in front with the torch in hand, her cloak of leaves whispering behind her, but the passage turned so much that Bran soon lost sight of her. Then the only light was what was reflected off the passage walls. After they had gone down a little, the cave divided, but the left branch was dark as pitch, so even Hodor knew to follow the moving torch to the right.

...

Hodor saw them too. "Hodor," he whimpered, reluctant to go on. But when the girl child stopped to let them catch her, the torchlight steadied, and Bran realized that the snakes were only white roots like the one he'd hit his head on. "It's weirwood roots," he said. "Remember the heart tree in the godswood, Hodor? The white tree with the red leaves? A tree can't hurt you."

...

"Hodor." Hodor plunged ahead, hurrying after the child and her torch, deeper into the earth. They passed another branching, and another, then came into an echoing cavern as large as the great hall of Winterfell, with stone teeth hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through its floor. The child in the leafy cloak wove a path through them. From time to time she stopped and waved her torch at them impatiently. This way, it seemed to say, this way, this way, faster.

...

"No, boy," the child said. "Behind you." She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.

...

"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.

Bran III ADWD

Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. "Will this make me a greenseer?"

...

Leaf touched his hand. "The trees will teach you. The trees remember." He raised a hand, and the other singers began to move about the cavern, extinguishing the torches one by one. The darkness thickened and crept toward them.

...

His father looked up. "Who's there?" he asked, turning …

… and Bran, frightened, pulled away. His father and the black pool and the godswood faded and were gone and he was back in the cavern, the pale thick roots of his weirwood throne cradling his limbs as a mother does a child. A torch flared to life before him.

So yes, it is a long shot. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the singers know how to light obsidian torches.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

I'm talking strictly Westoros magic. Beric/Stoneheart/alchemists are all eastern types of magic. We don't know how Robert's animated so I can't say for sure what's animating him and whether or not it's the native Westoros magic or the foreign eastern magic.

The point is though, I'm not dismissing that magic is on the rise. I agree. I'm simply saying that Westoros type magic (warging, skinchanging, greenseeing, giants, etc) has always been there and never waned like eastern magic did. It might be on the rise as well, but they're not suddenly re-discovering old powers like the alchemists and red priests are. That's only the Others and wights.

Essos, Shmessos. :D

Seriously, those events are taking place in Westeros. Thoros has given the last kiss in Essos before and no one rose from the dead. The pyromancers have been based in Westeros for a long time and just recently their power of wildfire has increased. Qyburn was a Westeros Maester himself, making a dead "man" walk again. He may have knowledge from the east too. But...

As to skinchanging and greenseeing, it is hard to say just how that power could be increasing. But the Halfhand says the old powers are waking and the trees have eyes again. I believe him. And the Stark wargs. How many years or centuries has it been since a skinchanger has openly wondered the lands south of the Wall, and even the Neck. And direwolves are now south of the wall also with their Starks.

...the dead rising again is concentrated in Westeros. And concentrated above in the north were the old gods are mostly revered as powers.

Qyburn and MMD are well studied people. MMD trained in Asshai where she met and learned from Marwyn too. Qyburn knows Marwyn, so exchange of knowledge there too I'm sure. But Marwyn is a Westerosi Maester and a well traveled and learned one mixing together all. So even MMD has a bit of Westerosi training.

[Blade of Sunlight]

I'm very much inclined, alas, to take both passages exactly as they are written. Those are not the colours of the candlelight but rather how those colours in the room appear. Compare the warm "ruddy glow" of the cave by firelight, or for that matter by ordinary candle-light, and then consider how everything would appear under a fluorescent strip light.

:agree:

Certainly due to the magical origin of the light it may have other effects (maybe glamors are pierced by it, pure speculation), it certainly appear to bring out the "essence" of the color, thus increasing contrast, whites are whiter, blacks are blacker, etc.

[Urrax2]

"Scarcely wake fire from dragonglass" refers does it not to striking a fire from obsidian and steel? Obsidian is similar to flint in this, is it not?

[Black Crow]

"Scarcely wake fire from dragonglass" refers does it not to striking a fire from obsidian and steel? Obsidian is similar to flint in this, is it not?

Its possible I suppose, but I rather believe that obsidian is rather too friable for that purpose, and therefore think it more likely that the reference is to turning on the neon light - or if used for communicating, the cathode tube. :devil: