Jump to content

Climactic battle of the War for the Dawn, theory and foreshadowing


chrisdaw

Recommended Posts

This will be a rough thread as the theory here isn't fully developed. I'm making the topic in the hope I can get a bit of help shoring it up. Some I'm completely confident in and some is speculative. This is not about the whole War for the Dawn, just the final battle.

The climactic battle of the WFTD will be fought in the dried seabed of the Blackwater Bay, specifically at the Gullet.

The wall was formed in two or three components, the first is water magic as foreshadowed here.

Quote

Art and music flourished in the cities of the Rhoyne, and it is said their people had their own magic—a water magic very different from the sorceries of Valyria, which were woven of blood and fire. Though united by blood and culture and the river that had given them birth, the Rhoynish cities were elsewise fiercely independent, each with its own prince...or princess, for amongst these river folk, women were regarded as the equals of men.

By and large a peaceful people, the Rhoynar could be formidable when roused to wroth, as many a would-be Andal conqueror learned to his sorrow. The Rhoynish warrior with his silver-scaled armor, fish-head helm, tall spear, and turtle-shell shield was esteemed and feared by all those who faced him in battle. It was said the Mother Rhoyne herself whispered to her children of every threat, that the Rhoynar princes wielded strange, uncanny powers, that Rhoynish women fought as fiercely as Rhoynish men, and that their cities were protected by "watery walls" that would rise to drown any foe.
 
They raised a wall of water, then they froze it. Perhaps the wall sits on what was once a river. Perhaps the COTF could raise the water and Brandon the Builder freeze it, or the other way around. And it seems to have been magically imbued too. Whatever, this wall is going to fall.
 
Then to halt the Other's advance a new wall is going to be formed in the same way, on the trident. It's going to work. And by it's construction the Blackwater Bay is going to be sucked dry. Either by design or just because the Others are going to round this new wall east until they come to the Gullet. The narrow sea will either have been dried up, or frozen. They may be the ones to freeze it.
 
We are in the Long Night now, there is no daylight whatsoever.
 
Either the whole of humanity or just it's defenders will make a stand against the Others in the dried bay at the Gullet. Jaime and Arya will lead the people there, Bran will oversee. Tyrion is dead, Melisandre is dead, Sansa a non-factor, Jon and Dany are busy playing wake the dragon from stone and some others are with them including Davos.
 
The defenders will throw up a wooden wall at the gullet. They will fight under a frozen ice wall, probably Bran the new wall architect ran out of power/water at the Gullet, so you've got an unfinished wall. Dragonstone will erupt like the doom, probably because there's no running water to cool the flames under.
 
There are many pieces of foreshadowing for all this are many. I'll detail later but this is sort of an overview, to show the linkage. The most straight forward is Melisandre's vision in the fire, thought to be about Hardhome.
Quote

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death.

The skulls are not death, the skulls are literal. It will be snowing.

Another is Patchface's words. Those that include "under the sea" are all referring to this. The sea dried, everyone has gone to the bay under the water line where the sea was. Everyone is therefor under the sea, everyone is a mermaid or merman, horses there are sea horses, horns are shells etc. The skulls.

Quote

Ser Malegorn offered his arm, and Queen Selyse took it stiffly. Her other hand settled on her daughter's shoulder. The royal ducklings fell in behind them as they made their way across the yard, marching to the music of the bells on the fool's hat. "Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs," Patchface proclaimed as they went. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

Melisandre's face darkened. "That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood."

They're the same skulls.

Another beacon for foreshadowing this event is the Dothraki sea. The 'dry' sea.

"Where is this Dothraki sea?" he demanded. "I will sail the Iron Fleet across it and find the queen wherever she may be."

The fisherman laughed aloud. "That would be a sight worth seeing. The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool."

The seabed will be many things, including sea grass, sand and wet around the ankles.

Quote

A white lion ran through grass taller than a man.

The white lion in the dothraki sea is directly foreshadowing Jaime in this dried sea. The sea grass will be taller than a man. He's important enough to be in Dany's vision because he leads the realm of men in battle against the Others.

Another stand out beacon is shallow water around the feet, wet boots, mists or the like around their feet, walking in mud, someone not being able to see their feet, etc. When the seabed dries it won't dry out completely, there will still be pools and a very shallow water. It may be people fight barefoot on the sands and mud. Examples below.

Quote

It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand's breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of the steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. Crouching, listening, Jaime moved in a circle, ready for anything that might come out of the darkness. The water flowed into his boots, ankle deep and bitterly cold. Beware the water, he told himself. There may be creatures living in it, hidden deeps . . .

And Arya here.

Quote

They opened inward all in silence, with no human hand to move them. Arya took a step forward, and another. The doors closed behind her, and for a moment she was blind. Needle was in her hand, though she did not remember drawing it.

A few candles burned along the walls, but gave so little light that Arya could not see her own feet. Someone was whispering, too softly for her to make out words. Someone else was weeping. She heard light footfalls, leather sliding over stone, a door opening and closing. Water, I hear water too.

Slowly her eyes adjusted. The temple seemed much larger within than it had without. The septs of Westeros were seven-sided, with seven altars for the seven gods, but here there were more gods than seven. Statues of them stood along the walls, massive and threatening. Around their feet red candles flickered, as dim as distant stars. The nearest was a marble woman twelve feet tall. Real tears were trickling from her eyes, to fill the bowl she cradled in her arms. Beyond her was a man with a lion's head seated on a throne, carved of ebony. On the other side of the doors, a huge horse of bronze and iron reared up on two great legs. Farther on she could make out a great stone face, a pale infant with a sword, a shaggy black goat the size of an aurochs, a hooded man leaning on a staff. The rest were only looming shapes to her, half-seen through the gloom. Between the gods were hidden alcoves thick with shadows, with here and there a candle burning.

Nymeria's, Ten Thousand Ships is littered with foreshadowing for this event. As I said Arya is a leader here, Nymeria for Arya. Nymeria and her people fled to the sea and found salvation. So ten, thousand, ten thousand and fleeing to ships and ships are all possible foreshadowing. See here.

Quote

To celebrate these unions, and make certain her people could not again retreat to the sea, Nymeria burned the Rhoynish ships. "Our wanderings are at an end," she declared. "We have found a new home, and here we shall live and die."

(Some of the Rhoynar mourned the loss of the ships, and rather than embracing their new land, they took to plying the waters of the Greenblood, finding it a pale shadow of Mother Rhoyne, whom they continued to worship. They still exist to this day, known as the orphans of the Greenblood).

The flames lit the coast for fifty leagues as hundreds of leaking, listing hulks were put to the torch and turned to ash; in the light of their burning, Princess Nymeria named Mors Martell the Prince of Dorne, in the Rhoynish style, asserting his dominion over "the red sands and the white, and all the lands and rivers from the mountains to the great salt sea."

As I said it's the last stand. No turning back.

When the sea drain and people seek shelter there, the seabed will have many gifts. Including wood, much wood, from all the sunken ships. It's from that they'll build this wooden wall, and at the last set it afire. So burning wooden walls are also foreshadowing.

As are pacts, or the forging of alliances, generally people setting aside their differences or being forcibly united. All the realm of men will unite for this battle. Like below.

Quote

Such supremacy was easier to declare than to achieve, however. Years of war followed, as the Martells and their Rhoynar partners met and subdued one petty king after another. No fewer than six conquered kings were sent to the Wall in golden fetters by Nymeria and her prince, until only the greatest of their foes remained: Yorick Yronwood, the Bloodroyal, Fifth of His Name, Lord of Yronwood, Warden of the Stone Way, Knight of the Wells, King of Redmarch, King of the Greenbelt, and King of the Dornish.

And things like this.

Quote

While this last may well be no more than fancy, the fact that some cataclysm took place many thousands of years ago seems certain. Lomas Longstrider, in his Wonders Made by Man, recounts meeting descendants of the Rhoynar in the ruins of the festival city of Chroyane who have tales of a darkness that made the Rhoyne dwindle and disappear, her waters frozen as far south as the joining of the Selhoru. According to these tales, the return of the sun came only when a hero convinced Mother Rhoyne's many children—lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day.

Dragonstone will erupt, the new doom, and how laval will bubble up from caves in the dry sea floor and at its edges. It will bring the warmth that will sustain life during the Long Night. It's what this is about.

Quote

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

And the hot springs beneath Winterfell as Catelyn describes.

Quote

Of all the rooms in Winterfell's Great Keep, Catelyn's bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man's body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death.

So this sort of imagery also relates, is often foreshadowing, and others including a multitude of fires such as this.

Quote

The world was grey darkness, smelling of pine and moss and cold. Pale mists rose from the black earth as the riders threaded their way through the scatter of stones and scraggly trees, down toward the welcoming fires strewn like jewels across the floor of the river valley below. There were more fires than Jon Snow could count, hundreds of fires, thousands, a second river of flickery lights along the banks of the icy white Milkwater. The fingers of his sword hand opened and closed.

They descended the ridge without banners or trumpets, the quiet broken only by the distant murmur of the river, the clop of hooves, and the clacking of Rattleshirt's bone armor. Somewhere above an eagle soared on great blue-grey wings, while below came men and dogs and horses and one white direwolf.

They'll dig holes in the ground for the warmth below, the whole beginning of the FM is foreshadowing.

Fire guttering out are also foreshadowing, but then that always was.

On the seafloor there will also be many corpses, only bones left, cleaned by the crabs.

Quote

"Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs," Patchface proclaimed as they went. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh."

Melisandre's face darkened. "That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood."

Fish might be contaminated by the Volcanic eruption on Dragonstone, they'll eat what they can. Food will have been exhausted from the mainland. They will literally eat starfish soup, from skulls used as bowls. Crabs I think have another meaning but I'll leave that for now.

And they will light fires for warmth anyhow they can..

Quote

"Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black," Patchface sang somewhere. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh." 

Green is easy, wildfire. Black not so easy. When Dragonstone erupts it will throw Obsidian into the sky and it will come down everywhere in ash and cloud (just like the description of Valyria). The glass candles are obsidian, black (though there is a green one with three black in the Citadel). I think black flame is obsidian burning. Whatever else its uses, the infinite amounts of dragonglass the Dragonstone eruption will bring them will make for weapons, and well why wouldn't they set them on fire now that dragonglass is becoming flammable? Blue I haven't worked out yet, Jaime's sword in his weirwood dream from which I quoted a part above has a blue flame as does Brienne's. Any help?

Finally, as I said salvation comes from the sea, the dried sea bed, where they'll find food and warmth, foreshadowed in a number of ways. Including another I haven't touched on yet. The Dothraki do not cross the poison water. Some will sure, those closest to Dany, but the khalasar Dany unites, the hundreds of thousands of screamers won't. They're going to wait. And ... the sea is going to run dry. And then they're going to cross, to bring woe to the enemies of their Khaleesi. The Others are going to be trying to breach this wooden wall the realm of men have created, and a united Khalasar is going to take them in the back.

Quote

Patchface jumped up. "I will lead it!" His bells rang merrily. "We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh."

Quote

"Supposedly she made her home in a burrow beneath a hollow tree. Whatever the truth of that, she had a vision of a fleet of ships arriving to carry the free folk to safety across the narrow sea. Thousands of those who fled the battle were desperate enough to believe her. Mother Mole has led them all to Hardhome, there to pray and await salvation from across the sea."

Salvation from the sea, the dothraki ride into the sea and out again on their horses. The whole Hardhome episode is foreshadowing TWFTD.

There's something going on with whispering heads and/or whispering caves down here too which I don't have a feel for. They're also going to be making many lightbringers down here, just haven't got my head all the way round that. It's to do with the crabs. Ser Clarence Crabb offers the most information on these.

 

All this comes to an end when Dany wakes the dragon from stone. Whether they know it or not their duty here is to just hold out for the dragon, but that's a different topic, the one below.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/139372-theory-for-the-ending-azor-ahai-lightbringer-etc/

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reserved for when I get around to putting all of it together.

I should point out this piece of foreshadowing that was posted by another person, I think Fireeater, in one of the foreshadowing threads. Though it honestly wasn't what started me off on this theory it did obviously reaffirm it for me.

Quote

Oh, it was all too much. Plots within plots, but all roads lead down the dragon's gullet. A guffaw burst from his lips, and suddenly Tyrion could not stop laughing.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting ideas, but a few points:

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:
Then to halt the Other's advance a new wall is going to be formed in the same way, on the trident. It's going to work. And by it's construction the Blackwater Bay is going to be sucked dry. Either by design or just because the Others are going to round this new wall east until they come to the Gullet. The narrow sea will either have been dried up, or frozen. They may be the ones to freeze it.
 

You need more evidence for this idea about raising the sea and then freezing it, not to mention that salt water doesn't freeze easily and we have very good indications that the Wall was made by dragging blocks of ice, etc.

Leaving aside the implausibility of the Westerosi recreating the magic that Brandon supposedly used to create the Wall:

  • the Trident does not connect with Blackwater Bay.
  • Presuming you're talking about the Blackwater river and not the Trident, even if this wall's construction exhausted all the water in Blackwater Bay, more water from the Narrow Sea would just rush in before it had all frozen (as the wall would have to be constructed while the seas are still liquid).
3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Either the whole of humanity or just it's defenders will make a stand against the Others in the dried bay at the Gullet. Jaime and Arya will lead the people there, Bran will oversee. Tyrion is dead, Melisandre is dead, Sansa a non-factor, Jon and Dany are busy playing wake the dragon from stone and some others are with them including Davos.

You need justifications for all these assertions you're making.

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

The defenders will throw up a wooden wall at the gullet. They will fight under a frozen ice wall, probably Bran the new wall architect ran out of power/water at the Gullet, so you've got an unfinished wall. Dragonstone will erupt like the doom, probably because there's no running water to cool the flames under.

  • Won't wood be far more valuable for burning and keeping warm?
  • Justification?
  • While you can argue back and forth for the liklihood of Dragonstone erupting, it will NOT erupt because there's not water left in the seas to keep it cool; that's not how volcanoes work. If anything it would be the opposite: Dragonstone keeping an area of water liquid in the 'sea' of ice.
3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

The seabed will be many things, including sea grass, sand and wet around the ankles.

If all the water has frozen, then it won't be wet unless you've had a fire nearby recently.

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Another stand out beacon is shallow water around the feet, wet boots, mists or the like around their feet, walking in mud, someone not being able to see their feet, etc. When the seabed dries it won't dry out completely, there will still be pools and a very shallow water. It may be people fight barefoot on the sands and mud. Examples below.

Same as previous. Also, in sub-freezing temperatures wouldn't people have to keep their footwear to protect their feet from the cold ground?

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

When the sea drain and people seek shelter there, the seabed will have many gifts. Including wood, much wood, from all the sunken ships. It's from that they'll build this wooden wall, and at the last set it afire. So burning wooden walls are also foreshadowing.

While there may be a bit of wood salvageable, it won't be nearly enough to build a wall of any significant size. It's also very unlikely that sea levels would retreat so far so quickly.

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Dragonstone will erupt, the new doom, and how laval will bubble up from caves in the dry sea floor and at its edges. It will bring the warmth that will sustain life during the Long Night. It's what this is about.

This is very possible: I believe areas of geothermal activity will have great importance in the future!

3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Fish might be contaminated by the Volcanic eruption on Dragonstone, they'll eat what they can. Food will have been exhausted from the mainland. They will literally eat starfish soup, from skulls used as bowls. Crabs I think have another meaning but I'll leave that for now.

  • Why would fish be contaminated by a volcano? Dragonstone is not the Doom: it has been erupting for many centuries with no ill-effects on its surroundings.
  • Food will have been exhausted everywhere!!! All energy that plants need to grow comes from the sun; without the sun all the plants will die, followed by all the animals and the vast majority of the humans (those with food stores and means of keeping warm may live a few more weeks).
  • Won't the starfish and crabs all be dead too?
3 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

The whole Hardhome episode is foreshadowing TWFTD.

Eww: show :ack:. I'm afraid you need canon evidence; the show is at its very best (ie never) is only semi-canon.

 

 

Sorry if this all seems overly negative: your idea has potential, but IMO you need to work out its kinks a bit more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Interesting ideas, but a few points:

You need more evidence for this idea about raising the sea and then freezing it, not to mention that salt water doesn't freeze easily and we have very good indications that the Wall was made by dragging blocks of ice, etc.

That there are blocks of ice making up part of the wall is a given, that doesn't mean the wall wasn't raised in a magical (fast) way that could be recreated at the trident or that if it was done wholly by the forming and/or laying of the blocks wasn't done magically in the first instance. The wall was raised and then added to successively according to various sources (Mormont saying that's what the NW did during Summer being the most prominent), and that's almost certainly having been done in a mundane fashion. It's the inner core that never melts that seems magical, the outer seems normal requiring upkeep and what. I'm proposing magical freezing so salt I don't think is so much an issue but now that you mention it it was a salty drop of water that dropped onto Bran at the Black Gate.

9 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Leaving aside the implausibility of the Westerosi recreating the magic that Brandon supposedly used to create the Wall:

Oh come now, this is a fantasy series, it's not implausible, it's inevitable. There were no COTF apparently. Then there is. There were no giants left apparently. Then there is. No dragons, then dragons. Whatever mythical or legendary thing, it all only exists to be recreated in the main series. Bran the Builder with the help of the COTF and giants built the wall. And conveniently we've got a Bran hanging with the COTF and giants roaming around.

The other option is men or Bran don't do the freezing, but Bran calls down the hammer of waters on the Others and they freeze it in front of them.

Quote

Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in her head.

 

10 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

 

  • the Trident does not connect with Blackwater Bay.
  • Presuming you're talking about the Blackwater river and not the Trident, even if this wall's construction exhausted all the water in Blackwater Bay, more water from the Narrow Sea would just rush in before it had all frozen (as the wall would have to be constructed while the seas are still liquid).

No I'm talking about the trident, freezing so much ice that the narrow sea returns to what it once was as theorised and described in TWOIAF. The sea should all ready be dropping as the Long Night causes mass sea water freezing around the caps and north. Then an event further drops the sea level so that the Narrow Sea finds bounds and ends up nothing more than a lake at the centre of a connecting land mass between Westeros and Essos. As I said the Dothraki Sea is foreshadowing, the dry sea. And it has a lake in the middle too, the womb of the world, said to be bottomless. Bottomless, like a drain.

Quote

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.

Most scholars do agree that Essos and Westeros were once joined; a thousand tales and runic records tell of the crossing of the First Men. Today the seas divide them, so plainly some version of the event the Dornish call the Breaking must have occurred. Did it happen in the space of a single day, however, as the songs would have it? Was it the work of the children of the forest and the sorcery of their greenseers? These things are less certain. Archmaester Cassander suggests elsewise in his Song of the Sea: How the Lands Were Severed, arguing that it was not the singing of greenseers that parted Westeros from Essos but rather what he calls the Song of the Sea—a slow rising of the waters that took place over centuries, not in a single day, and was caused by a series of long, hot summers and short, warm winters that melted the ice in the frozen lands beyond the Shivering Sea, causing the oceans to rise.

Many maesters find Cassander's arguments plausible and have come to accept his views. But whether the Breaking took place in a single night, or over the course of centuries, there can be no doubt that it occurred; the Stepstones and the Broken Arm of Dorne give mute but eloquent testimony to its effects. There is also much to suggest that the Sea of Dorne was once an inland freshwater sea, fed by mountain streams and much smaller than it is today, until the narrow sea burst its bounds and drowned the salt marshes that lay between.

Which would include the drying of Blackwater Bay.

10 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

You need justifications for all these assertions you're making.

Those that relate are in the thread, the rest are other topics.

10 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

 

  • Won't wood be far more valuable for burning and keeping warm?
  • Justification?

The wood is going to keeping the Others out, wood for warmth is of no use to anyone if the Others get through.

11 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Same as previous. Also, in sub-freezing temperatures wouldn't people have to keep their footwear to protect their feet from the cold ground?

No because the ground, the seabed, is going to be warm. That's why they're going to go and find salvation there. The hundred fires in caves. Lava flows just under the ground and bursting through in places. Like the Winterfell quote, keeping the ground from freezing. The water itself I don't think will be remnants of the sea but melted snows.

11 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

While there may be a bit of wood salvageable, it won't be nearly enough to build a wall of any significant size. It's also very unlikely that sea levels would retreat so far so quickly.

It's not so much a built up wall as a thrown together barrier. They're just going to throw anything they can find between the Gullet. There will exist mass amounts of wrecks, from Blackwater, Spears of the Merling King and the like that they can bring, But there will be an existing barricade of wrecks there from the battle at the Gullet. That's your foreshadowing for this portion as well as this.

Quote

 

Only now those foes have gotten past the Wall to come up from the south, Jon reflected, and the lords and kings of the Seven Kingdoms have forgotten us. We are caught between the hammer and the anvil. Without a wall Castle Black could not be held; Donal Noye knew that as well as any. "The castle does them no good," the armorer told his little garrison. "Kitchens, common hall, stables, even the towers . . . let them take it all. We'll empty the armory and move what stores we can to the top of the Wall, and make our stand around the gate." 

So Castle Black had a wall of sorts at last, a crescent-shaped barricade ten feet high made of stores; casks of nails and barrels of salt mutton, crates, bales of black broadcloth, stacked logs, sawn timbers, fire-hardened stakes, and sacks and sacks of grain. The crude rampart enclosed the two things most worth defending; the gate to the north, and the foot of the great wooden switchback stair that clawed and climbed its way up the face of the Wall like a drunken thunderbolt, supported by wooden beams as big as tree trunks driven deep into the ice.

The last few moles were still making the long climb, Jon saw, urged on by his brothers. Grenn was carrying a little boy in his arms, while Pyp, two flights below, let an old man lean upon his shoulder. The oldest villagers still waited below for the cage to make its way back down to them. He saw a mother pulling along two children, one on either hand, as an older boy ran past her up the steps. Two hundred feet above them, Sky Blue Su and Lady Meliana (who was no lady, all her friends agreed) stood on a landing, looking south. They had a better view of the smoke than he did, no doubt. Jon wondered about the villagers who had chosen not to flee. There were always a few, too stubborn or too stupid or too brave to run, a few who preferred to fight or hide or bend the knee. Maybe the Thenns would spare them.

 

Note they're protecting the people of Moletown, as this make shift barricade will be protecting the people surviving by the tunnels they've cut into the ground for warmth.

11 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

 

  • Why would fish be contaminated by a volcano? Dragonstone is not the Doom: it has been erupting for many centuries with no ill-effects on its surroundings.

It's not going to be just a simple eruption, it will be a Doom like Valyria, an event of the size that sunk a peninsula into the sea. They're going to be in close proximity to Dragonstone and ash will be everywhere, ash poisons sea-life in general, in world Valyria Doom also. But suppose it doesn't they'll eat up everything available on the seafloor and then end up in need, resorting to starfish? Maybe that's what's significant about them, they're the absolute last resort, the last thing left, after them is dead, and that's why they make the Patchface quote.

I'm also working to this quote here (wiki quote below).

Quote

All foodstuff and freshwater is brought in by ship, as animals brought into the city soon die, and the waters of the Ash river glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with green phosphoresence by night. The only fish that dwell in its water are blind and deformed, with only fools and shadowbinders daring to eat of their flesh.

Green for the wildfire, ash for the dragonstone doom. This refuge is going to resemble Ashai.

12 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

 

  • Food will have been exhausted everywhere!!! All energy that plants need to grow comes from the sun; without the sun all the plants will die, followed by all the animals and the vast majority of the humans (those with food stores and means of keeping warm may live a few more weeks).
  • Won't the starfish and crabs all be dead too?

I don't think we're quite that deep yet. Just all grain is depleted.

Crabs I think relate to either one of two things, the first drinking from skulls, as there's heaps of references in the series to anyone drowning being for the crabs. The crabs clean their flesh, and all that's left are the bones. Or crabs refer to king's blood, as in king crabs (people have discussed crabs = kings in foreshadowing before, if not in its own thread then in the moments of foreshadowing ones). Patchface who says these starfish and crab words has blood on his lips according to Mel's fires, and the crab king is a lesser god of the Rhoynar. So maybe they're all drinking king's blood down there for some reason was a speculation I had.

Starfish is an interesting question. There's either something specific about starfish (like they survive longer without sunlight? Survive poison waters longer?) or it's symbolic. Starfish jumps straight to Seastar, Shiera. But I doubt she's coming back from the dead. Maybe she's not dead though. More likely if it is symbolic I think Shiera's name is symbolising the same thing starfish ars. The Grey King's table was a starfish shape I think.

12 hours ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Eww: show :ack:. I'm afraid you need canon evidence; the show is at its very best (ie never) is only semi-canon.

I'm not referring to the show but Hardhome's historic and current catastrophe.

The first like the Doom which will happen to Dragonstone in close proximity.

And Mother Mole takes them there, below a grey cliff, to escape the Others and wait for salvation from the sea. Which as explained is foreshadowing this event. Dead things in the water, the Others, dead things, will come to the Gullet, which was once sea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

That there are blocks of ice making up part of the wall is a given, that doesn't mean the wall wasn't raised in a magical (fast) way that could be recreated at the trident or that if it was done wholly by the forming and/or laying of the blocks wasn't done magically in the first instance. The wall was raised and then added to successively according to various sources (Mormont saying that's what the NW did during Summer being the most prominent), and that's almost certainly having been done in a mundane fashion. It's the inner core that never melts that seems magical, the outer seems normal requiring upkeep and what. I'm proposing magical freezing so salt I don't think is so much an issue but now that you mention it it was a salty drop of water that dropped onto Bran at the Black Gate.

GRRM has always tried hard to keep magic within 'realistic' boundaries. Being able to raise such huge quantities of water, carrying it inland, and then freezing it does not keep within those boundaries. Of course that's not to say it couldn't have happened, but it's something to bear in mind.

The inner core never melts because it's never exposed to the (warmer) outside air. That's physics, not magic.

Excellent spot on the salty water bit! Although I always assumed the door was crying for some reason?

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Oh come now, this is a fantasy series, it's not implausible, it's inevitable. There were no COTF apparently. Then there is. There were no giants left apparently. Then there is. No dragons, then dragons. Whatever mythical or legendary thing, it all only exists to be recreated in the main series. Bran the Builder with the help of the COTF and giants built the wall. And conveniently we've got a Bran hanging with the COTF and giants roaming around.

The other option is men or Bran don't do the freezing, but Bran calls down the hammer of waters on the Others and they freeze it in front of them.

There's a difference between magical species that were believed to be extinct (predictably) not being extinct, and introducing a huge new type/application of magic for one of the story's most important features.

I believe that the term 'Hammer of the Waters' is a mistranslation; it should say: 'The Hammer was the Waters'. All the areas around the world that seem to have been affected by the Hammer are in coastal locations: the land was submerged by the sea. The land around the Trident is not nearby the sea; if the Hammer is to be effective it would have to wash away mountains to the east or a huge expanse of land to the west.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

No I'm talking about the trident, freezing so much ice that the narrow sea returns to what it once was as theorised and described in TWOIAF. The sea should all ready be dropping as the Long Night causes mass sea water freezing around the caps and north. Then an event further drops the sea level so that the Narrow Sea finds bounds and ends up nothing more than a lake at the centre of a connecting land mass between Westeros and Essos. As I said the Dothraki Sea is foreshadowing, the dry sea. And it has a lake in the middle too, the womb of the world, said to be bottomless. Bottomless, like a drain.

I myself am a proponent of the changing sea level theory, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim the Narrow Sea would be completely landlocked! Obviously it is blocked off by the Arm of Dorne, but I take the view that the Sea of Dorne/Myrth was once a landlocked lake, and to the north of it was a narrower Narrow Sea, opening onto the Shivering Sea.

'Bottomless' just means 'too deep to swim'. The Womb of the World will doubtless be important, but not as a drain.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

The wood is going to keeping the Others out, wood for warmth is of no use to anyone if the Others get through.

Defences against the Others won't be any use if everyone's frozen to death first.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

No because the ground, the seabed, is going to be warm. That's why they're going to go and find salvation there. The hundred fires in caves. Lava flows just under the ground and bursting through in places. Like the Winterfell quote, keeping the ground from freezing. The water itself I don't think will be remnants of the sea but melted snows.

The absence of any volcanic islands in the Blackwater region other than Dragonstone and Driftmark indicates that the lava flows relatively straight up through the crust to them, and does not spread out under the seabed. I doubt that the ground by itself would remain warm enough to be very comfortable to walk on barefoot.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

It's not so much a built up wall as a thrown together barrier. They're just going to throw anything they can find between the Gullet. There will exist mass amounts of wrecks, from Blackwater, Spears of the Merling King and the like that they can bring, But there will be an existing barricade of wrecks there from the battle at the Gullet. That's your foreshadowing for this portion as well as this.

Even given the hundreds of ships that have been wrecked there in the past, it's difficult to see how useful they'll be. Most of the craft will have rotted away to nearly nothing by now, and what remains of the rest won't be enough to make a wall long enough to defend against an army from the north.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Note they're protecting the people of Moletown, as this make shift barricade will be protecting the people surviving by the tunnels they've cut into the ground for warmth.

In Moles' Town the people lived in holes for protection from the wind, not because of geothermal heat. You need to go down about 70m for the temperature to increase by 1C for that.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

It's not going to be just a simple eruption, it will be a Doom like Valyria, an event of the size that sunk a peninsula into the sea. They're going to be in close proximity to Dragonstone and ash will be everywhere, ash poisons sea-life in general, in world Valyria Doom also. But suppose it doesn't they'll eat up everything available on the seafloor and then end up in need, resorting to starfish? Maybe that's what's significant about them, they're the absolute last resort, the last thing left, after them is dead, and that's why they make the Patchface quote.

I'm also working to this quote here (wiki quote below).

Quote

All foodstuff and freshwater is brought in by ship, as animals brought into the city soon die, and the waters of the Ash river glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with green phosphoresence by night. The only fish that dwell in its water are blind and deformed, with only fools and shadowbinders daring to eat of their flesh.

Green for the wildfire, ash for the dragonstone doom. This refuge is going to resemble Ashai.

The Doom was almost certainly exacerbated by magic, so Dragonstone is unlikely to erupt with the same devastating consequences. The Fourteen Flames were also a supervolcano, something that the Dragonmount clearly isn't.

Sea life can sometimes benefit from eruptions: for example plankton can experience population booms because of large amounts of iron falling into the sea. However, eruptions are often harmful for sea life, mainly due to the local effects of gas in the water or pH changes.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

I don't think we're quite that deep yet. Just all grain is depleted.

If there's no sun, then pretty much every living thing on the planet is dead.

10 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

I'm not referring to the show but Hardhome's historic and current catastrophe.

The first like the Doom which will happen to Dragonstone in close proximity.

And Mother Mole takes them there, below a grey cliff, to escape the Others and wait for salvation from the sea. Which as explained is foreshadowing this event. Dead things in the water, the Others, dead things, will come to the Gullet, which was once sea.

Apologies: your use of the word 'episode' mislead me there.

I agree that Pyke's message is rich in foreshadowing, although I've never been so strong at that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎3‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 10:10 PM, chrisdaw said:

When the sea drain and people seek shelter there, the seabed will have many gifts. Including wood, much wood, from all the sunken ships. It's from that they'll build this wooden wall, and at the last set it afire. So burning wooden walls are also foreshadowing.

As per this the wooden wall Sandor helps build foreshadows the event. I should have just said wooden or makeshift walls in general, not necessarily burning.

Quote

The villagers were building a wooden palisade around their homes, and when they saw the breadth of the Hound's shoulders they offered them food and shelter and even coin for work. "If there's wine as well, I'll do it," he growled at them. In the end, he settled for ale, and drank himself to sleep each night.

His dream of selling Arya to Lady Arryn died there in the hills, though. "There's frost above us and snow in the high passes," the village elder said. "If you don't freeze or starve, the shadowcats will get you, or the cave bears. There's the clans as well. The Burned Men are fearless since Timett One-Eye came back from the war. And half a year ago, Gunthor son of Gurn led the Stone Crows down on a village not eight miles from here. They took every woman and every scrap of grain, and killed half the men. They have steel now, good swords and mail hauberks, and they watch the high road—the Stone Crows, the Milk Snakes, the Sons of the Mist, all of them. Might be you'd take a few with you, but in the end they'd kill you and make off with your daughter."

Dunno about Stone Crows, but Milk Snakes and Sons of the Mist are obvious Others/Wights foreshadowing. The Burned Men will likely scout for the good guys now, watch the high road, as the Others will need to pass around the Vale in the dried sea to get to the Gullet.
 

Quote

But when the work was done and the tall wooden palisade was finished, the village elder made it plain that there was no place for them. "Come winter, we will be hard pressed to feed our own," he explained. "And you . . . a man like you brings blood with him."

Sandor's mouth tightened. "So you do know who I am."

"Aye. We don't get travelers here, that's so, but we go to market, and to fairs. We know about King Joffrey's dog."

"When these Stone Crows come calling, you might be glad to have a dog."

"Might be." The man hesitated, then gathered up his courage. "But they say you lost your belly for fighting at the Blackwater. They say—"

"I know what they say." Sandor's voice sounded like two woodsaws grinding together. "Pay me, and we'll be gone."

When they left, the Hound had a pouch full of coppers, a skin of sour ale, and a new sword. It was a very old sword, if truth be told, though new to him. He swapped its owner the longaxe he'd taken at the Twins, the one he'd used to raise the lump on Arya's head. The ale was gone in less than a day, but Clegane sharpened the sword every night, cursing the man he'd swapped with for every nick and spot of rust. If he lost his belly for fighting, why does he care if his sword is sharp? It was not a question Arya dared ask him, but she thought on it a lot. Was that why he'd run from the Twins and carried her off?

The Others hunt by sensing the warm blood in people according to Old Nan. There's going to be a divide in the population, those who the Others can sense, and those who they can't, and those who can't be sensed are not going to want those who can be to come with them. Arya will be a leader, and so perhaps she'll remember this event, what it was like to be moved along and not allowed to stay in, and decide everyone comes.

Seems like the Hound is going to find himself a new old sword on the seabed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...