Astronomy of Planetos: Children of the Dawn, Part One

[vuk]

Stygai today is wrath of the Lion of Night.

[LmL]

Just want to say how awesome your threads and analyses are LmL.

Your OP convinced me, but then I picked up one of the books (ADwD I think it was), read two chapters, and immediately found references to the moon all over the place. I could only wonder how I'd never realized that before. But I guess we're so used to seeing the moon and sun everywhere and in literary descriptions, that it's easy to miss when there is symbolism behind it.

Now I want to do a complete re-read, but I don't have the time these days. :bawl:

Keep up the great work.

Thanks and yes, I have the same experiences ever since I've begun re-reading. The weirdest scenes have these sun and moon metaphors.. I mean check out Sansa and Butterbumps with the Queen of zThorns. Sansa and Petyr arriving at the fFingers and meeting Lysa. Brienne and Jamie when Brienne pushes the rock off the cliff. It's almost heavy-handed, but somehow, nobody picked up of what he was really doing with all that colorful language. That's his 'grass' in which he hides his secrets: the colorful and precise descriptions of things. Any time he starts describing stuff, my ears prick up now. "Three things huh, and the second one split in half, you say? Do go on..." :)

As for a re-read, you ever do the audiobook thing? I would never have time to go over text like i do if not for that.

[vuk]

Thanks for honoring my thread with your first post on the forum! Welcome! That's an interesting idea about Stygai. I haven't thought too much about it, really. The only thing about that is my general argument that such a large city as Asshai makes more sense to be built by an old, rich civilization that is thriving, as opposed to black sorcerers during an apocalypse. If Asshai was like, a small fortress city, or like Yeen, I'd say "yeah, maybe the black sorcerers built it," but it's so offing huge... I think it was transformed. I hitnk the corruption flows from the heart of shadow and poisons everything on the whole peninsula. But I'll keep your idea in mind as I go. :cheers:

[LmL]

Stygai today is wrath of the Lion of Night.

It could be that the piece of Nissa's corpse, the black stone worshipped by the BSE, lies at Stygai. It's the corpse city because it has a corpse of the moon goddess, perhaps. I imagine some horrifying sacrificial altar there or something. Yikes. :eek:

[vuk]

Thx, it is honor to post on such a creative essey. I understood the reasons you follow, it's probably Asshai the capital, but i had in mind that Bloodstone Emperor maybe wanted to make the city that will be bigger than any before, that will cast a shadow on everything else. Something like Black Harren.

[vuk]

Thx, it is honor to post on such a creative essey. I understood the reasons you follow, it's probably Asshai the capital, but i had in mind that Bloodstone Emperor maybe wanted to make the city that will be bigger than any before, that will cast a shadow on everything else. Something like Black Harren.

[vuk]

Sorry my posts late thanks to bad net. Maybe "by the Shadow" means "made by Shadow"

[Rippounet]

It's almost heavy-handed, but somehow, nobody picked up of what he was really doing with all that colorful language.

It's especially baffling when you realize the moon is so often mentioned for scenes taking place during the day.

As for a re-read, you ever do the audiobook thing? I would never have time to go over text like i do if not for that.

I tried, but I'm just not a fan of the medium. Haven't even moved to digital books yet, so I'm stuck in the 20th century. ;)

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

First reply to your posts on this, don't know how I missed them before - loving your work!

Firstly, great thinking, the whole background to the Long Night is a really fruitful area for discussion, since everything that came after was essentially a reaction to the destruction it brought (almost destroying the world). So if we're mistaken about what went down, we're likely mistaken about who's doing what this time around.

There's so much I want to say, arrrrgh! This is a very brief outline of the main points where I'd query your grand theory (whilst not disagreeing with it in large part - it's good stuff). I'm gonna post something more detailed when I type it up.

(1) Nissa Nissa's scream: there's an inconsistency in the sequence of events?

It's indicated that it was Nissa Nissa's scream that cracked the second moon, if we take the order of events in the story literally. Azor Ahai killed Nissa Nissa to forge a weapon to fight the darkness. This suggests that the Long Night had already descended by the time Azor Ahai is forging his weapon. However, if the Long Night was physically caused by huge chunks of moon rock hitting Planetos, this leaves us with a circular argument about what happened first.

If we take it for granted that there was a second moon that did crack, then it's almost certain that this is what triggered the Long Night; it has to be - it's satisfactory from all angles.

This causes me trouble with the interpretation of the astronomical event.

(2) CotF

You haven't said much about the CotF, other than you don't necessarily believe they broke the Arm of Dorne.

I disagree with this. In fact, I think it's essential to consider the CotF in this story, as we know (again, almost "for a fact") that they did posses the ability to influence Planetos on a large scale: through what we can call "earth magic" for lack of a better word. The Horn of Joramun could "wake giants from the earth" by causing an earthquake (it's a poetic description of what happens when the hills start rolling and splitting); this theory has been discussed around the place, and to me is by far the most credible and full explanation of the Horn of Joramun, and the type of powerful magic the CotF are said to possess. And it's powerful beyond doubt - the true extent of its power isn't acknowledged often enough (more below).

There is a deep and unsettling problem with the CotF in my mind, which is that they've been served to us on a platter as the neutral (nay, good) "green" force in the story; your typical elfish "blessed be, keep the balance" grouping. That can't be completely right, because then they'd effectively be completely good.

SO: (1) we know the CotF possess the ability to trigger earthquakes, and (2) we know they wanted to (and did) stop the flow of FM into Westeros, and (3) we know GRRM doesn't write morally unassailable actions.

The CotF broke the Arm of Dorne to stop the advance of the First Men into Westeros. But this kind of powerful magic has consequences; you can't just trigger an earthquake large enough to smash a land bridge without causing follow-on effects on the planet. It's an interaction between the magical and the "natural", in the case the planet's orbit, that's interesting; this huge magical earthquake can't just happen, be done, and that's it.

I suggest that the breaking of the Arm of Dorne required an earthquake of such force that it affected (albeit slightly) the planet's orbit. This is potentially lethal to any planet, but at the time Planetos was also locked in a delicate balance between its orbit around the Sun and the orbits of its two moons. The knock-on effect of the big earthquake was to "tip" the second moon slightly out of its orbit around Planetos . Just enough that the second moon spends the next 2,000 years still orbiting Planetos, but drifting ever closer to it. As the moon gets closer, Planetos's gravitational pull starts breaking it up - first small chunks (the Bloodstone Emperor; Dawn?) and then, at the point at which the moon approaches too close, it breaks up entirely. The huge impacts cause the Long Night.

Timeline-wise, this would place the initial "damage" at the time of the breaking of Dorne (10,000ya) and the final breaking of the moon at the start of the Long Night (8,000ya).

So, the CotF come into the story as the main cause for the astronomical event that resulted in the Long Night. Or, to argue against something you said in your first post on this topic: a moon might "just wander out of orbit" ;)

The long-term effect of the initial orbital knock provided by the earthquake and the loss of the second moon is the continued irregular oscillation in Planetos's axial tilt: meaning the seasons.

Implications:

- this may be why the Neck was only flooded and not broken to stop the Andals. Knowing what they did the first time around, the CotF only used a minor form of the breaking magic this time around (rather than "failing" to break the Neck as is the usual story).

- the Doom of Valyria (as another earth-breaking event) may have been the initial trigger to the sequence of events that will bring down the second moon as well, after some time passes. Maybe. I find it intriguing to think that the ending was predetermined in a sense: play the game of thrones, fight the Others, whatever, but the second moon is crashing to Planetos, that's already done and dusted and just a matter of when.

(3) The Others (... fair warning, here comes the crazy... )

The Others are creatures of the second moon before it was destroyed. They are wholly "alien" to Planetos, and were brought there when the second moon (or what was left of it), crashed - not being living in any sense that's familiar to us, and thriving in the freezing cold, is how they made it. Everything about them suggests that they are alien to all other life on Planetos. Sure, the special type of cold that is associated with them (not the bone-freezing cold of northern winter, but the kind of cold described as freezing the air in your lungs etc) might be seen as a special type of Planetos ice-magic. But to me it really evokes something of outer space; the coldness of a moon with no atmosphere - the Others' natural habitat.

This feels like the untold second part of the dragon origin story; both dragons and the Others come from the second moon.

(4) The second moon, dragons, the Others and magic

So where do dragons come from precisely? I love your analysis of dragons/meteors and how they would have appeared at the time the second moon broke - superb.

In a literal sense though, where do dragon eggs come from? All we know for sure is the Shadow. The lethal lands around blighted Asshai... just screams "impact site", doesn't it?? I think dragon eggs and the Others both crashed on Planetos with pieces of the second moon (dragons in the Shadow, the Others elsewhere), or less literally were magicked from bloodstone that crashed in the same way.

The second moon is the source of ice and fire magic on Planetos (unlike the magic practiced by the CotF), both figuratively as the origin of the Others and dragons, and literally as the source of the bloodstone that was, I think, essential to the fire/blood magic we've seen at least.

There's an elegance to this: the CotF (the neutral, natural, “green” force) brought upon Planetos both the "cold made flesh" (the Others) and the "fire made flesh" (dragon eggs), neither of which belong on Planetos.

Incidentally, the Others didn't cause the Long Night in this scenario. They were ripped from their home, their home was destroyed, and then they find themselves on Planetos where suddenly THEY are the bad guys?

(5) The Hightowers

I think we also know why the small Hightower-dominated clique within the Citadel is so hell-bent on destroying magic and dragons. It's not because they don't believe in the Others; after all, wanting to destroy magic assumes you believe in it. It's precisely because they know more of their history than most (thanks, the Hightowers) and believe in the link between magic, dragons and the Others; and perhaps also that the CotF and their magic are not smelling of roses either. All must go.

[Durran Durrandon]

The sword of the Titan of Braavos is broken , what does this mean? Maybe titan is based on LH.

I had the same thought at one point.

[LmL]

First reply to your posts on this, don't know how I missed them before - loving your work!

Firstly, great thinking, the whole background to the Long Night is a really fruitful area for discussion, since everything that came after was essentially a reaction to the destruction it brought (almost destroying the world). So if we're mistaken about what went down, we're likely mistaken about who's doing what this time around.

There's so much I want to say, arrrrgh! This is a very brief outline of the main points where I'd query your grand theory (whilst not disagreeing with it in large part - it's good stuff). I'm gonna post something more detailed when I type it up.

Hey Lord Pepsi Cupps; where ya been? ;) I actually noticed a couple of smart things you said several months ago when I was just starting to see this astronomy pattern - I forget what, but I think I have you a shout out in the first essay at the end. I *thought* I sent you a pm telling you about the theory, but who knows. Time leeches at a mans memories. Anyway, glad to have you come join in the fun. We usually debate any part of the broader theory within any of these threads, we aren't 'stay-on-topic nazis' here or anything. So it's all good bay-bay bay-bay! And thanks so much for all your kind words throughout your post. Means a lot coming from respected Ser such as yourself.

(1) Nissa Nissa's scream: there's an inconsistency in the sequence of events?

It's indicated that it was Nissa Nissa's scream that cracked the second moon, if we take the order of events in the story literally. Azor Ahai killed Nissa Nissa to forge a weapon to fight the darkness. This suggests that the Long Night had already descended by the time Azor Ahai is forging his weapon. However, if the Long Night was physically caused by huge chunks of moon rock hitting Planetos, this leaves us with a circular argument about what happened first.

If we take it for granted that there was a second moon that did crack, then it's almost certain that this is what triggered the Long Night; it has to be - it's satisfactory from all angles.

This causes me trouble with the interpretation of the astronomical event.

My interpretation is that the big lie is that Azor Ahai made his sword to fight the darkness, after it had fallen. That's the story, but the symbols say otherwise. As you say, the astronomy dictates that the sun-sword striking the moon was what set everything off. That's actually how I came about realizing that Azor Ahai was the bad guy - the astronomy says he is. This led me to compare him to the bloodstone emperor, something a few people were nosing around at already, and this was a home run.

The Jon as Azor Ahai dream provides a wonderful corroboration, as Jon is doing AA things (fire sword, killing his love Ygritte) and BSE things (murdering the rightful lord of Winterfell, usurping). There's lots of evidence connecting these two, and I continually find more as I go. So that seems about as certain as any part of my theory, in my mind. I just don't see anything, symbolically, to suggest that Azor Ahai forged his sword as a reaction to darkness. The BSE worships a black stone that fell from the sky - I'm assuming that this stone was used to forge AA's sword (well not assuming, lots of evidence for this too), which would make it more of a darkbringer than a lightbringer, and this lines up with everything else I have discovered about Lightbringer. So I feel pretty confident that all the text points to AA and his celestial counterpart as both being instigators of the Long Night.

Now, did AA redeem himself as the Last Hero? That's possible, I certainly think his sword is the LH's sword, even if AA is not the LH himself. There are a few clues about AA dropping his weapon or losing his weapon that I have found.

(2) CotF

You haven't said much about the CotF, other than you don't necessarily believe they broke the Arm of Dorne.

I disagree with this. In fact, I think it's essential to consider the CotF in this story, as we know (again, almost "for a fact") that they did posses the ability to influence Planetos on a large scale: through what we can call "earth magic" for lack of a better word. The Horn of Joramun could "wake giants from the earth" by causing an earthquake (it's a poetic description of what happens when the hills start rolling and splitting); this theory has been discussed around the place, and to me is by far the most credible and full explanation of the Horn of Joramun, and the type of powerful magic the CotF are said to possess. And it's powerful beyond doubt - the true extent of its power isn't acknowledged often enough (more below).

There is a deep and unsettling problem with the CotF in my mind, which is that they've been served to us on a platter as the neutral (nay, good) "green" force in the story; your typical elfish "blessed be, keep the balance" grouping. That can't be completely right, because then they'd effectively be completely good.

SO: (1) we know the CotF possess the ability to trigger earthquakes, and (2) we know they wanted to (and did) stop the flow of FM into Westeros, and (3) we know GRRM doesn't write morally unassailable actions.

Well, I am getting to the cotf - they certainly are important. In my first draft I had a little bit of everything, but it was crazy to read, so I've been peeling out ideas and exploring them thoroughly, one at a time. I have a lot of ideas about the cotf, especially in connection to the Others (read back over the early pages of the comments on this thread). But I do not think they caused the arm breaking. I listed my reasons for this a couple of pages ago also, I'll copy the link in a minute. But I disagree that we can connect them to any earthquakes. The horn of Joramun is talking about an earthquake, I agree there, but we don't have anything to tie tthe horn to the cotf, that I am aware of at least (share this if you have it:)). The arm was broken way too late to do anything about the FM invasion - that's the red flag clue to suspect the popular story on this.

I do agree with your point about the way the cotf are presented, to an extent. We did see First Men performing blood sacrifice before the heart tree, though, which ostensibly was a practice that came from the cotf (not a fact, however, merely implied) - that's pretty dark. I tend to think of sacrificing people who don't want to be sacrificed as pretty horribly evil, as much as anything else is. And is Jojen paste is a thing... and it may be, nothing rules it out... that's really dark. So I am not sure it's fair to say they are presented as totally benevolent.

Here's how I view them: they are loyal to the earth. Earth first, if you will. If people are a problem, harming the earth, then people might need to die. They are basically extreme environmentalists - they care more about the planet than the human race. If there's a conflict there, they are on team earth. Here's an important thing to remember about the cotf: Leaf tells us they have existed for a thousand thousands man years. That's a million years of existing in harmony with the earth - they don't farm, and the concept of balance is deeply imbedded in their beliefs. They way they talk about every song having its balance, how the cotf's summer is ended, how those given the gift of green sight have weak bodies and short lives... The theme is balance, and sometimes balancing things may require some killing.

It seems to me like they basically 'house broke' the first men. They taught them to be moderately civilized. Not burning the weirwoods is emblematic of living in some measure of harmony with their environment, at least enough to not completely destroy the nature magic of the entire continent that is weirwoodnet. I even think it may be that cotf are the ones who seeded all the races, perhaps in an effort to elevate their consciousness, their state of awareness, to reduce the brutality. I dealt with this idea a bit in the second essay about the garden of Eden and the burden and responsibility that comes with choice and free will. I think there's something here, but I'm still working on putting it together.

The CotF broke the Arm of Dorne to stop the advance of the First Men into Westeros.

Hearsay! Hearsay! ;) j/k, continue on...

But this kind of powerful magic has consequences; you can't just trigger an earthquake large enough to smash a land bridge without causing follow-on effects on the planet. It's an interaction between the magical and the "natural", in the case the planet's orbit, that's interesting; this huge magical earthquake can't just happen, be done, and that's it.

I suggest that the breaking of the Arm of Dorne required an earthquake of such force that it affected (albeit slightly) the planet's orbit. This is potentially lethal to any planet, but at the time Planetos was also locked in a delicate balance between its orbit around the Sun and the orbits of its two moons. The knock-on effect of the big earthquake was to "tip" the second moon slightly out of its orbit around Planetos . Just enough that the second moon spends the next 2,000 years still orbiting Planetos, but drifting ever closer to it. As the moon gets closer, Planetos's gravitational pull starts breaking it up - first small chunks (the Bloodstone Emperor; Dawn?) and then, at the point at which the moon approaches too close, it breaks up entirely. The huge impacts cause the Long Night.

Timeline-wise, this would place the initial "damage" at the time of the breaking of Dorne (10,000ya) and the final breaking of the moon at the start of the Long Night (8,000ya).

So, the CotF come into the story as the main cause for the astronomical event that resulted in the Long Night. Or, to argue against something you said in your first post on this topic: a moon might "just wander out of orbit" ;)

The long-term effect of the initial orbital knock provided by the earthquake and the loss of the second moon is the continued irregular oscillation in Planetos's axial tilt: meaning the seasons.

Implications:

- this may be why the Neck was only flooded and not broken to stop the Andals. Knowing what they did the first time around, the CotF only used a minor form of the breaking magic this time around (rather than "failing" to break the Neck as is the usual story).

- the Doom of Valyria (as another earth-breaking event) may have been the initial trigger to the sequence of events that will bring down the second moon as well, after some time passes. Maybe. I find it intriguing to think that the ending was predetermined in a sense: play the game of thrones, fight the Others, whatever, but the second moon is crashing to Planetos, that's already done and dusted and just a matter of when.

Interesting hypothesis. Here's the thing: I have based everything in my theories off of interpreting the text to the best of my abilities. Very little of this was me having an idea and then looking for corroboration - it was mostly the other way around. The one thing I did come up with was the comet splitting - I was trying to figure out how the comet could have destroyed a moon 10,000 years ago and still be coming back in the current story - the comet would have been obliterated. So it occurred to me, what if it split? And then I read the Tywin splitting Ned's word part, and I said "bingo." Since then I have found several more instances of comet splitting, so I regard this as very solid.

Similarly, the sun stabbing the moon with his sword / penis happens literally countless times through all five books. So I'm quite certain the mechanism was a comet, seen to be an extension of the sun, striking the moon. I haven't seen any text clues indicating that an earthquake disrupted the moon's orbit. I will however keep this idea in mind as I go over my notes, it's always possible the clues are there and I haven't recognized them. This is my standard procedure when someone suggests an idea that doesn't immediately ring a bell - I put it in my back pocket and keep it mind as I look through text. So I'll let you know if I find anything like that.

There are some clues that the cotf, or at least their trees, were "involved" with the fire from heaven, but it mostly seems to be on the receiving end. The Grey King tricks the Storm God to strike a tree with lightning, which is a metaphor for the meteor which seems to have landed on the iron islands. Did you read my comments about the broken sword and the lightning a few pages back?

I think the cotf's role was helping to mitigate the disaster and help man survive and overcome the LN. The Bran chapters where he is underground learning his craft from Leaf and Bloodraven are full of clues that the cotf have an entire underground ecosystem, don't you think this would be handy during the Long Nit? They most likely had a large part in helping man survive in Westeros. They also helped the LH reforge his sword, which seems to be the turning point. Garth is not a cotf but he represents the closest union of mankind to nature, and he founded the sacred order of green men which guards the isle of faces. He seems to have been a sacrifice during the LN, the first Corn King / Green Man deity who is always sacrificed to bring the spring, just as TWOAIF says about Garth. So the cotf aren't on the sidelines, by any means. I've also connected the creation of the Others to renegade greenseers, although they are probably men and not cotf. That's just plain old ahead of where I am right now with my finished theories. I have notes for at least 6 more essays as dense as these first four. Some of that stuff is only, notes and ideas, not proven to the extent that my first wave of astronomy stuff is.

(3) The Others (... fair warning, here comes the crazy... )

The Others are creatures of the second moon before it was destroyed. They are wholly "alien" to Planetos, and were brought there when the second moon (or what was left of it), crashed - not being living in any sense that's familiar to us, and thriving in the freezing cold, is how they made it. Everything about them suggests that they are alien to all other life on Planetos. Sure, the special type of cold that is associated with them (not the bone-freezing cold of northern winter, but the kind of cold described as freezing the air in your lungs etc) might be seen as a special type of Planetos ice-magic. But to me it really evokes something of outer space; the coldness of a moon with no atmosphere - the Others' natural habitat.

This feels like the untold second part of the dragon origin story; both dragons and the Others come from the second moon.

I am pretty sure the destroyed moon was the fire moon, and the one in the sky is the ice moon. Only dragons are associated with the fire moon - however, dragons existed prior to its destruction, as we know form the existence of five forts and Battle Isle fortress. So dragons did not originate from the fire moon... Similarly, I doubt the others are from the ice moon. They represent space itself, but I don't think they come from space directly. The comet came from space (the "wanderer from far off places" is the Stranger and the comet), and triggered the Others, but also the Deep Ones (the dark tide) and the Bloodstone Emperor's brand of shadow magic. So in a roundabout way, yes, but that ice moon is still up there. I think it's going to be hit, and unleash the ice dragon somehow. That's just my loose prediction though. I'm not one of those to take bets on anything ;)

(4) The second moon, dragons, the Others and magic

So where do dragons come from precisely? I love your analysis of dragons/meteors and how they would have appeared at the time the second moon broke - superb.

In a literal sense though, where do dragon eggs come from? All we know for sure is the Shadow. The lethal lands around blighted Asshai... just screams "impact site", doesn't it?? I think dragon eggs and the Others both crashed on Planetos with pieces of the second moon (dragons in the Shadow, the Others elsewhere), or less literally were magicked from bloodstone that crashed in the same way.

The second moon is the source of ice and fire magic on Planetos (unlike the magic practiced by the CotF), both figuratively as the origin of the Others and dragons, and literally as the source of the bloodstone that was, I think, essential to the fire/blood magic we've seen at least.

There's an elegance to this: the CotF (the neutral, natural, green force) brought upon Planetos both the "cold made flesh" (the Others) and the "fire made flesh" (dragon eggs), neither of which belong on Planetos.

Incidentally, the Others didn't cause the Long Night in this scenario. They were ripped from their home, their home was destroyed, and then they find themselves on Planetos where suddenly THEY are the bad guys?

Addressed some of this above, but we agree the Others didn't cause the LN. They took advantage of it, rather. It's all about balance, so destroying the fire moon and corrupting the heart of summer into the shadow would weaken fire magic overall, allowing ice magic to expand and fill the void. I think that's how things work. Ice and fire need to check each other.

Check this out. This is similar in concept to your last idea. The sun is the bright fire, the Fire Moon is the dark fire, the shadowy fire. The Ice Moon is ice that is is bright, giving off light, so what is cold and dark? The sun is the bright fire, that's the fire god, God's Eye. So what is cold and dark, a match for the Great Other? Space. Space is darkness punctuated by blue stars. The Others themselves represent the ice moon, ice that shines, but the Great Other may be darkness and blue stars.

Yes Asshai screams impact site, but, it's possible the destruction of the fire moon itself corrupted the heart of summer. I am picturing the hearts of winter and summer to be tied to the respective moons, so when the fire moon goes kablooey, the summer heart withers. Beyond this, the actual shade, the shadow of the fire moon goddess may be "shadow bound" the area around Asshai, in a manner of speaking. Her blood are soul and strength and courage went into the steel (the meteors which crashed to earth), but what about her shade, her ghost, her shadow? What is the Shadow by which Asshai sits?

Dragons seem to come from volcanic areas, and I believe the heart of summer must have been so before its corruption. I don't actually by the idea that man bred dragons from wyverns and firewyrms. There's all kinds of problems with that, which maybe we can talk about later, in short on time now. I think it's more likely Azor Ahai / the BSE created the modern form of dragon bonding via blood sacrifice, and perhaps created the black dragons which breathe black fire.

(5) The Hightowers

I think we also know why the small Hightower-dominated clique within the Citadel is so hell-bent on destroying magic and dragons. It's not because they don't believe in the Others; after all, wanting to destroy magic assumes you believe in it. It's precisely because they know more of their history than most (thanks, the Hightowers) and believe in the link between magic, dragons and the Others; and perhaps also that the CotF and their magic are not smelling of roses either. All must go.

I am very curious what they are up to. Mithras made a great point up thread, which was that the Hightowers were originally friendly with the cotf when they created the citadel, but when the Andlas came, there seems to have been an infiltration and usurpation that occurred.

There are several ideas in the comments of this thread you should read based on your comments above, I recommend going back over it.

Cheers and thanks so much for the detailed response. Pleas continue to participate, and if you would be so kind, check out my wordpress blog at the link in my signature. I beefed up and edited the first essay and crammed more proof into it. If you really want to be cool, leave a comment, and people seem hesitant to comment on blog posts for some reason. :cheers:

[Mithras]

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

This was the hatching of Dany’s third dragon egg. We only know that the first one was Viserion. The crack of Viserion’s egg was the weakest and Viserion appears to be the weakest dragon. Therefore, there is a fairly good possibility that the third dragon to hatch was Drogon. After all, we saw Viserion and Rhaegal suckling at Dany’s teats. Drogon must be the latecomer as he could not find a free teat.

Legend says that the great floods that broke the land bridge that is now the Broken Arm and made the Neck a swamp were the work of the greenseers, who gathered at Moat Cailin to work dark magic. Some contest this, however: the First Men were already in Westeros when this occurred, and stemming the tide from the east would do little more than slow their progress. Moreover, such power is beyond even what the greenseers are traditionally said to have been capable of...and even those accounts appear exaggerated. It is likelier that the inundation of the Neck and the breaking of the Arm were natural events, possibly caused by a natural sinking of the land. What became of Valyria is well-known, and in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea.

This passage clearly proves that the breaking of the arm had nothing to do with the children of the forest. It is said to be beyond the usual powers of the greenseers.

Then, who had the dark magic that can affect the world in the global scale? Who were the most powerful magic users?

I think the only civilization that unlocked such high level magic was the GEotD. So, I think the breaking of the arm was the work of some GeoDawnians in Westeros.

The children fought back as best they could, but the First Men were larger and stronger. Riding their horses, clad and armed in bronze, the First Men overwhelmed the elder race wherever they met, for the weapons of the children were made of bone and wood and dragonglass. Finally, driven by desperation, the little people turned to sorcery and beseeched their greenseers to stem the tide of these invaders.

And so they did, gathering in their hundreds (some say on the Isle of Faces), and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice (a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves. The Summer Sea joined the narrow sea, and the bridge between Essos and Westeros vanished for all time.

Sacrificing their own young is the most powerful fuel of magic and if a GeoDawnian with the blood of their divine emperors does that, the magic should be of enormous scale, enough to break the world.

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

Bors the Breaker, who gained the strength of twenty men by drinking only bull’s blood, and founded House Bulwer of Blackcrown. (Some tales claim Bors drank so much bull’s blood he grew a pair of shiny black horns.)

Bors the Breaker was a son of Garth Greenhand. His association with bulls reminds me of the sacrificial bull. Along with Garth being a deity demanding blood sacrifice for bountiful harvests and the sacrifice of their own young in breaking the arm, this really looks intriguing. And finally, Bors apparently had a pair of shiny black horns, most probably coming from his mother, a giant female aurochs. What happened to those shiny black horns of Bors the Breaker?

The horn he blew was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.

a bronze-headed spear lying beside that big black . . .

. . . horn.

Jon sucked in his breath.

A warhorn, a bloody great warhorn.

The horn was huge, eight feet along the curve and so wide at the mouth that he could have put his arm inside up to the elbow. If this came from an aurochs, it was the biggest that ever lived. At first he thought the bands around it were bronze, but when he moved closer he realized they were gold. Old gold, more brown than yellow, and graven with runes.

From this moment on, things go wild.

[LmL]

I had the same thought at one point.

You should re-read the chapter where Arya first sees the Titan. It's pretty rich with astronomy and sword forging stuff.

[Durran Durrandon]

First reply to your posts on this, don't know how I missed them before - loving your work!

Firstly, great thinking, the whole background to the Long Night is a really fruitful area for discussion, since everything that came after was essentially a reaction to the destruction it brought (almost destroying the world). So if we're mistaken about what went down, we're likely mistaken about who's doing what this time around.

There's so much I want to say, arrrrgh! This is a very brief outline of the main points where I'd query your grand theory (whilst not disagreeing with it in large part - it's good stuff). I'm gonna post something more detailed when I type it up.

(1) Nissa Nissa's scream: there's an inconsistency in the sequence of events?

It's indicated that it was Nissa Nissa's scream that cracked the second moon, if we take the order of events in the story literally. Azor Ahai killed Nissa Nissa to forge a weapon to fight the darkness. This suggests that the Long Night had already descended by the time Azor Ahai is forging his weapon. However, if the Long Night was physically caused by huge chunks of moon rock hitting Planetos, this leaves us with a circular argument about what happened first.

If we take it for granted that there was a second moon that did crack, then it's almost certain that this is what triggered the Long Night; it has to be - it's satisfactory from all angles.

This causes me trouble with the interpretation of the astronomical event.

I'm not exactly sold ob your resolution to this problem (I have a very different view on the origin of the Others), but I agree that it is a big problem, and I think you are on the right track in trying to solve it. Whoever comes up with the right resolution for that timeline issue is going to have a huge advantage in explaining what is really happening.

[Durran Durrandon]

You should re-read the chapter where Arya first sees the Titan. It's pretty rich with astronomy and sword forging stuff.

I read it mostly as evidence Sansa was going to kill Littlefinger at Winterfell. :)

[LmL]

I'm not exactly sold ob your resolution to this problem (I have a very different view on the origin of the Others), but I agree that it is a big problem, and I think you are on the right track in trying to solve it. Whoever comes up with the right resolution for that timeline issue is going to have a huge advantage in explaining what is really happening.

What resolution to what problem? I am lost. What timeline issue> Did you read my last comment in response to Lord Pepsi Cupps, by chance?

[LmL]

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

This was the hatching of Dany’s third dragon egg. We only know that the first one was Viserion. The crack of Viserion’s egg was the weakest and Viserion appears to be the weakest dragon. Therefore, there is a fairly good possibility that the third dragon to hatch was Drogon. After all, we saw Viserion and Rhaegal suckling at Dany’s teats. Drogon must be the latecomer as he could not find a free teat.

Legend says that the great floods that broke the land bridge that is now the Broken Arm and made the Neck a swamp were the work of the greenseers, who gathered at Moat Cailin to work dark magic. Some contest this, however: the First Men were already in Westeros when this occurred, and stemming the tide from the east would do little more than slow their progress. Moreover, such power is beyond even what the greenseers are traditionally said to have been capable of...and even those accounts appear exaggerated. It is likelier that the inundation of the Neck and the breaking of the Arm were natural events, possibly caused by a natural sinking of the land. What became of Valyria is well-known, and in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea.

This passage clearly proves that the breaking of the arm had nothing to do with the children of the forest. It is said to be beyond the usual powers of the greenseers.

Then, who had the dark magic that can affect the world in the global scale? Who were the most powerful magic users?

I think the only civilization that unlocked such high level magic was the GEotD. So, I think the breaking of the arm was the work of some GeoDawnians in Westeros.

The children fought back as best they could, but the First Men were larger and stronger. Riding their horses, clad and armed in bronze, the First Men overwhelmed the elder race wherever they met, for the weapons of the children were made of bone and wood and dragonglass. Finally, driven by desperation, the little people turned to sorcery and beseeched their greenseers to stem the tide of these invaders.

And so they did, gathering in their hundreds (some say on the Isle of Faces), and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice (a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves. The Summer Sea joined the narrow sea, and the bridge between Essos and Westeros vanished for all time.

Sacrificing their own young is the most powerful fuel of magic and if a GeoDawnian with the blood of their divine emperors does that, the magic should be of enormous scale, enough to break the world.

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

Bors the Breaker, who gained the strength of twenty men by drinking only bull’s blood, and founded House Bulwer of Blackcrown. (Some tales claim Bors drank so much bull’s blood he grew a pair of shiny black horns.)

Bors the Breaker was a son of Garth Greenhand. His association with bulls reminds me of the sacrificial bull. Along with Garth being a deity demanding blood sacrifice for bountiful harvests and the sacrifice of their own young in breaking the arm, this really looks intriguing. And finally, Bors apparently had a pair of shiny black horns, most probably coming from his mother, a giant female aurochs. What happened to those shiny black horns of Bors the Breaker?

The horn he blew was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.

a bronze-headed spear lying beside that big black . . .

. . . horn.

Jon sucked in his breath.

A warhorn, a bloody great warhorn.

The horn was huge, eight feet along the curve and so wide at the mouth that he could have put his arm inside up to the elbow. If this came from an aurochs, it was the biggest that ever lived. At first he thought the bands around it were bronze, but when he moved closer he realized they were gold. Old gold, more brown than yellow, and graven with runes.

From this moment on, things go wild.

Wow, great comments, I got to think on that for a minute. That horn existing north of the Wall is quite... mysterious.

As far as the third crack being as loud as the breaking of the world, I was basically saving that one, thanks Mithras. ;) Yes, it seems clear that the breaking of the world is directly connected to the destruction of the fire moon (Daenerys burning in the fire of the sun, Drogo's pyre) and hatching three dragon meteors, the third of which broke the world - the arm of Dorne. And one of the Stepstones is named BLOODSTONE, guys, wake up and smell the coffee. Heh. I kid. But seriously.

And there's the God's Eye, also connected to this event. Why? Because the God's Eye is the fire moon in partial eclipse formation, superimposed over the sun, like a blackl pupil, the exact alignment that was in place when the comet struck.

But, the cotf are involved in this somehow... there's still some mysteries left to discover here, so everyone needs to keep thinking about this.

[LmL]

I actually JUST found something, another version of this same story from AGOT:

The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.

AGOT, BRAN

The formula fro a magic sword is metal, glass, and stone, in some form. When I read "wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze," I read that as wood and stone and obsidian make a good match with steel, not bronze. Wood is required for the fire that heats the forge, and the other three go into the sword (or, the stone goes on the pommel while the glass and steel go into the sword... there are hints for both). Now consider all the stuff about the burning tree in connection to the broken sword, the lightning strike, and meteors. The trees always burn. So maybe that's part of reforging the magic sword - burning weirwoods for the fire. That's a sacrifice of greenseers alright. Would their spirits go into the sword, like Nissa's? Whoa, crazy talk.

[LmL]

From the beginning of the burring of Drogo, quite a big deal is made of the wood for the pyre. Remember this pyre is the sun's fire in which the fire moon is burnt and sacrificed to wake three dragons.

They took the two straightest trees, hacked the limbs and branches from them, skinned off their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a square. Its center they filled with straw, brush, bark shavings, and bundles of dry grass. Rakharo chose a stallion from the small herd that remained to them; he was not the equal of Khal Drogo’s red, but few horses were. In the center of the square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an instant with an axe blow between the eyes.

[...]

Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn logs; trunks of smaller trees and limbs from the greater, and the thickest straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east to west, from sunrise to sunset.

[...]

The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions and sleeping silks.

[LordImp]

It is said that the whenever Braavos is in danger the titan will step out in the sea to protect Braavos , a hint that the Last hero will return?