Westeros/Planetos = a Riverworld-type purgatory?

[StarkofWinterfell]

The world of Ice and Fire is a strange one. Society seems to be at a technologically stagnant state for the past 8,000 or so years and there doesn't seem to be any signs of advancement. The world is locked in the medieval times with little concern for science, and it almost seems like it's been this same way since the start, almost as if the humans of Planetos somehow were masters at stoneworking and metallurgy, building castles and making armor right at the dawn of their species.

In Riverworld, we have the same sort of situation. Technology is forcibly kept quite primitive by the lack of resources of the planet. And humans resurrected on Riverworld retain much of their knowledge from their past life and live in a world that is familiar to them. Obviously there are few issues with comparing the two worlds. The world of Planetos is not one giant river, and who is to say if everyone is resurrected from different time periods and sent here? Also, there are major differences such as there being no "grails" that provide food, which makes life quite easy for the inhabitants of Riverworld. In contrast, the denizens of Planetos live a quite harsh life, unless they were born into luxury and nobility. There are quite a bit more differences, but the two major things I'd like to highlight are:

1. The limited technological knowledge that seems to be locked to a certain level

2. The Others as aliens or the "caretakers."

"The Others as caretakers?" you may now be asking yourselves. Why yes, we know that in Riverworld there is a mysterious alien species that brought all the humans to the planet and are there to observe them and test them. This, in my opinion, is very similar to the Others of Planetos. A mysterious species that have been present but out of sight for the past 8,000 or so years and the last thing we heard from these creatures is that they started the Long Night and fought some fellow named Azor Ahai. Those events are debatable, because the written history of it wasn't written down to much later by maesters who had never experienced it.

Could Planteos be what Riverworld would become if left unchecked for 8,000 years? Are the Others like the alien species in Riverworld? With the perpetually locked technology and the mysteriousness of these otherwordly beings, who is to say that it is not like a "Purgatory" type place?

[falcotron]

The world of Ice and Fire is a strange one. Society seems to be at a technologically stagnant state for the past 8,000 or so years and there doesn't seem to be any signs of advancement. The world is locked in the medieval times with little concern for science, and it almost seems like it's been this same way since the start, almost as if the humans of Planetos somehow were masters at stoneworking and metallurgy, building castles and making armor right at the dawn of their species.

This isn't quite true. We know that the First Men brought bronze to Westeros, and the Andals brought iron and steel. We also know that the Andals brought tall ships that ended the Ironborns' unstoppability at sea. And so on. Cultures aren't stagnant, they just advance 10-12x too slow.¹ )I personally think this means something, but not everyone agrees, and I have no great argument.²)

In Riverworld, we have the same sort of situation. Technology is forcibly kept quite primitive by the lack of resources of the planet. And humans resurrected on Riverworld retain much of their knowledge from their past life and live in a world that is familiar to them.

There's a much bigger difference than the ones you bring up. Resources on GRRM's planet don't seem to be limited at all. They obviously had no problem finding iron ore, or coal and the various key elements of steel, etc. when their culture had advanced to a point where it needed them. And nobody on Westeros has any memory, or even dreams, of a different world where they could advance technology if only there weren't these darned resource problems. That's not at all what you'd expect 8000 years into the future of Riverworld.

Also, the Others haven't been seen for 8000 years, and even then only in Westeros; in the mean time, great empires have arisen using new technologies and powerful magic on Essos, and the Others don't seem to have done anything about them. (Even if you think the Others somehow caused the Doom, why wait millennia to do so? The Caretakers certainly wouldn't have done that.)

PS: This isn't really relevant to your idea, but for an interesting take on the Riverworld-type idea, I love the City of the Saved that Larry Miles and Philip Purser-Hallard invented for the Faction Paradox series. It doesn't get into the mechanics of how things work at all,³ but you've got, e.g., characters arguing about whether it's purgatory or heaven, and even after they've learned what it actually is, that still doesn't answer their question.

¹ I know some people will argue that the time scales of recorded history are vastly inflated and the Andals came only 2200 years ago rather than 6000, etc., but that still makes things 4x too slow, and means the problem that inspired the OP's question is still a problem, not something he invented.

² My key observation is that everything from after the Doom seems to be moving at much more realistic speeds, and therefore something about the Valyrian Freehold may have been involved. My guess is that they were involved in a very simple way: they had some magic that either directly controlled time or history, or indirectly did so by misusing the moon, or something like that, and therefore we've got 5000 years of almost perfect stagnation. But I'll admit that there's really no evidence for this besides the contrast between recent and earlier times, there are obviously weird things about time and about the moon on this planet, etc.

³ Basically, a human who'd turned into what's effectively a TARDIS later decided to turn herself into a home outside of spacetime where she could resurrect every human and posthuman throughout history. The science is far too sufficiently advanced to even ask questions about whether the City is astrodynamically stable or how the resurrection machinery works.

[StarkofWinterfell]

This isn't quite true. We know that the First Men brought bronze to Westeros, and the Andals brought iron and steel. We also know that the Andals brought tall ships that ended the Ironborns' unstoppability at sea. And so on. Cultures aren't stagnant, they just advance 10-12x too slow.¹ )I personally think this means something, but not everyone agrees, and I have no great argument.²)

There's a much bigger difference than the ones you bring up. Resources on GRRM's planet don't seem to be limited at all. They obviously had no problem finding iron ore, or coal and the various key elements of steel, etc. when their culture had advanced to a point where it needed them. And nobody on Westeros has any memory, or even dreams, of a different world where they could advance technology if only there weren't these darned resource problems. That's not at all what you'd expect 8000 years into the future of Riverworld.

Also, the Others haven't been seen for 8000 years, and even then only in Westeros; in the mean time, great empires have arisen using new technologies and powerful magic on Essos, and the Others don't seem to have done anything about them. (Even if you think the Others somehow caused the Doom, why wait millennia to do so? The Caretakers certainly wouldn't have done that.)

PS: This isn't really relevant to your idea, but for an interesting take on the Riverworld-type idea, I love the City of the Saved that Larry Miles and Philip Purser-Hallard invented for the Faction Paradox series. It doesn't get into the mechanics of how things work at all,³ but you've got, e.g., characters arguing about whether it's purgatory or heaven, and even after they've learned what it actually is, that still doesn't answer their question.

¹ I know some people will argue that the time scales of recorded history are vastly inflated and the Andals came only 2200 years ago rather than 6000, etc., but that still makes things 4x too slow, and means the problem that inspired the OP's question is still a problem, not something he invented.

² My key observation is that everything from after the Doom seems to be moving at much more realistic speeds, and therefore something about the Valyrian Freehold may have been involved. My guess is that they were involved in a very simple way: they had some magic that either directly controlled time or history, or indirectly did so by misusing the moon, or something like that, and therefore we've got 5000 years of almost perfect stagnation. But I'll admit that there's really no evidence for this besides the contrast between recent and earlier times, there are obviously weird things about time and about the moon on this planet, etc.

³ Basically, a human who'd turned into what's effectively a TARDIS later decided to turn herself into a home outside of spacetime where she could resurrect every human and posthuman throughout history. The science is far too sufficiently advanced to even ask questions about whether the City is astrodynamically stable or how the resurrection machinery works.

Falcotron, thanks for your well thought-out and constructed post. I'd really like to explore that more, with the First Men and the Andals and their levels of technology but the rate of technological advancement is too slow to be natural. We know that humans are always curious and innovating, and the grand scale of time that has already occurred in the world of ice and fire is just too great a time to still be where the cultures are at. It's a topic that I may examine in another post, but it is personally of interest to me.

But I am not sure to what extent the Others terrorized Essos 8000 years ago during the Long Night. If we are to assume that they'll only invade Westeros, then they really are no threat if they could be contained there. I'd wager that because of the proliferation of the Red God and the stories about Azor Ahai in Essos, that the Others did have a presence there 8,000 years ago that spawned the religion of the red priests.

You've sparked my interest in this "City of the Saved" of the Faction Paradox series.