Maester of Valyria Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 22 hours ago, Veloknight said: Well, truce or no truce, I would argue the results are by definition going to be very one-sided, which makes it essentially existential. If the Others really need Winter to survive and they want to spread their kind of icy world further south, human populations will be by necessity greatly reduced, and I suspect that the Other population is similarly reduced by their being cooped up north. My basic argument is that a given climate, there can be kingdoms of men, or kingdoms of Others, and since they want to cool the climate overall, there will be many regions in which kingdoms of men simply cannot exist as anything other than small bands similar to the Wildlings. I'm not a climatologist, but wouldn't a gradual process over centuries be somewhat expected? Perhaps the Others have resealed the Arm before, causing what is remembered as the Long Night? Not necessarily. Deserts are defined by aridity, not temperature. Even many equatorial deserts get quite cold at night, and there are plenty of tundra areas that receive little to no precipitation. I'm not sure how they'll cool the desert, but maybe they plan on moving through the night and hiding underground during the day? Thought: Volcanism can be a tool for the Others as much as it is for anyone else. If there is a supervolcanic hot spot under the Lands of Always Winter, triggering a large eruption could lead to a huge fallout winter. If they knew when the 'natural' length of winters (caused, I suppose, by a more pronounced tilt of the planet) would be longest, they could plan to make their move, seize territory and thralls and possibly sacrifices, then trigger an eruption, keeping the land enmeshed in winter for generations. If nothing else, this should completely decimate the population of humans and CoTF, which would give them time to do Other things. Indeed, and this (perhaps easier to comprehend) gradual process is a strong argument against the volcanism one. However, I'm not sure how warmer water from the south would maintain liquid water lakes in the centre of the Lands of Always Winter. For me, volcanoes are the only natural means of doing that. This is true: the lack of clouds in deserts mean there is no shade in the day, but conversely there is no insulation at night. I imagine the Others could keep going very happily in the potentially sub-freezing temperatures of a midnight desert. Perhaps, but since the eruption of such a volcano would surely melt the Others' homeland, before potentially cooling the planet, I feel it's more likely that the Children were involved (they are after all 'those who sing the song of earth'). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 On 2/29/2016 at 3:50 PM, Maester of Valyria said: You might be interested in a theory I'm working on: there's a very rough and incomplete version in my signature. I just read your theory and it looks very interesting. Can't wait to see what you come up with! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester of Valyria Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 19 hours ago, OldGimletEye said: I just read your theory and it looks very interesting. Can't wait to see what you come up with! Thank you, I'll try not to disappoint! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
House Cambodia Posted June 9, 2016 Share Posted June 9, 2016 Just caught up with this, thanks to a link by Maester of Valyria. Will comment later Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
House Cambodia Posted June 10, 2016 Share Posted June 10, 2016 Right, read the thread. Quite marvellous. First of all, commendation to daccu65 for a wonderful Others POV - I don't buy it but I love it just the same! FWIW I see a great deal of merit in both Lord's Vance's hypothesis and Maester of Valyria's volcanic hypothesis. I think I can work both of them into my developing hypothesis of a kind of Gaia Theory underlying the climate and geology of Planetos, as part of a universe in which the laws of physics are infused by rational laws of magic. Allow me to flesh out what I understand from the OP, and hopefully LVII will endorse or correct my thoughts. Pre-Breaking of the Arm the Narrow Sea was perpetually very cold. The cold winds and temperatures would render east Westeros and West Essos unsuitable for human habitation or agriculture. Given that Westeros was populated by COTF and giants who didn't practice agriculture and were comfortable in cold temperatures this would have been unproblematic and unrecorded. In West Essos there was no civilization (seven millennia pre-Valyria, no Pentos, no Myr, no Tyros), agriculture or Men. Whoever lived there hasn't left any extant records, so again it's entirely plausible that we have no records on the ecosystem there either. I particularly like the deep and tragic irony of the Children's action. The very measure that they took to prevent further immigration of Men had the opposite effect. Without the Breaking, First Men would likely have settled in only the southern third and west coast of Westeros since a settled agricultural way of life would have been preferable to a Wildling lifestyle any further north. The climate change actually made all Westeros up to the line of the future Wall an attractive proposition to colonise. Furthermore, the irony doesn't stop there. The action pushed the Children into inhabiting a smaller area, an area that overlapped with the subsequently-created Others' living-space. I also like the notion that the climate change following the Breaking caused the retreat north of mammoths and giants more so than the hunts of Men. Now I had shared with you the assumption that the Others were natural creatures, but the TV show has spooked me and I know assume that GRRM will reveal that they were created by the Children. So I'd like to tweak your ideas to allow for that knowledge. Are you ready .... There are two kinds of Children - sort of. There are The Children OF The Forest, and The Children ARE The Forest. Yes, mobiles and immobiles; mortals and immortals. Except that they are not separate sub-species, but separate stages of development. Children are born and live for centuries, and when they get old they fuse with the roots of the weirwood to become more fully part of the weirnet. So naturally, Children are immortal but they can be killed - by giants, hunting mishaps - but the death rate was extremely low hence the extremely low and slow birth rate. This was of course wrecked by Men, who also cut down and destroyed the otherwise immortal weirwood trees. And what did we see on the TV? After the Breaking and the Necking failed to hold back the invasions and genocidal activities of Men, the children tried one last desperate measure. A First Man was fused to the weirwood heart tree, thus creating the first human/weirChild hybrid, a creature intended to have the strength of Men and mind of weir. The children thought they had created their WMD to use against Men. Big mistake, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester of Valyria Posted June 10, 2016 Share Posted June 10, 2016 On 01/03/2016 at 7:08 PM, OldGimletEye said: I just read your theory and it looks very interesting. Can't wait to see what you come up with! Just thought you'd like to know that I've finished my full theory: it's the top link in my signature. I apologise for the bad formatting, but I hope that you can struggle through it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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