Heresy 188

[Black Crow]

44 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

That may very well be, but I am trying to put the events into an order that makes sense.  The standard version doesn't make sense to me:

Of course it doesn't which is why some of we miserable heretics suggest it was the Long Night that forced men to agree the Pact as outlined above.

[Black Crow]

27 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

The swamps of the neck are what stopped the Andal invaders.  Supposedly they were created earlier, by the Children, for no good reason.  I think it is more likely they were created to stop the Andals, who were cutting down weirwoods and killing Children.

From the World Book:
"It was the North and the North alone that was able to keep the Andals at bay, thanks to the
impenetrable swamps of the Neck and the ancient keep of Moat Cailin"

Not quite, the swamps of the Neck were reckoned to result from the Hammer of the Waters, rather than for "no good reason". The Starks [and those "cold northern ghosts" then held the line against the Andals - except those prisoners they shipped north to man the Wall - after all the tree-huggers chased out by the Andals found no refuge in the North.

[Brad Stark]

44 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Of course it doesn't which is why some of we miserable heretics suggest it was the Long Night that forced men to agree the Pact as outlined above.

If the Long Night was to force men to agree to the pact, then there are 2 times that make sense:

1) When the first men first arrived, before the pact was signed.

2) When the Andals arrived, and the pact was broken.

If we go with 2), what caused the first men to sign the pact in the beginning?  I also have trouble with the geography, if this is the origin of the wall.  The Isle of Faces is far south of the wall.

[JNR]

I think the traditional timeline is not all that confusing or contradictory.  Works like this:

1. First Men invade Westeros.  The CotF break the Arm, but it's not good enough to stop the invasion.

2. The CotF know the land and have magic and consider weirwoods sacred; the First Men are newcomers and have better weapons and have no respect for weirwoods.  The emerging conflict goes on for a long, long time.

3. The CotF finally try to confine the First Men to the South via a "hammer of the waters" -- very likely a massive tsunami -- aimed at the Neck.  This fails because the continent is far larger than the Arm, but it does succeed in creating the swamps.

4. Because the hammer failed, the CotF realize they cannot stop the First Men's progress.  The First Men, similarly, are awed by the devastating power of the hammer of the waters and realize that while they might win the continent, there will certainly be mass death for hundreds of years against such an enemy, that has magic so powerful when they have zero.  The wise of both sides prevail and the Pact is brokered.

Whether one accepts it or not, that's more or less the account given in the canon, and cited as having occurred long before the Long Night -- two thousand years before, or roughly ten thousand years prior to the time of the story.

Not by coincidence, ten thousand years is also the cited age of Moat Cailin, which logically would have been built after the hammer of the waters... when the First Men would have begun entering the North in significant numbers, and when it became clear that the dry causeway was an extremely strategic point to control.

[Melifeather]

17 minutes ago, JNR said:

The CotF break the Arm,

 

17 minutes ago, JNR said:

"hammer of the waters" -- very likely a massive tsunami

Ah yes. The contentious argument about whether these were two separate events! I actually lean towards there being three separate events, but only one hammer of water that broke the land bridges of Dorne and Iron Islands. I think the story of Azor Ahai is an oral history of the Children's actions directed towards invaders...the forging of the three swords equates three different attempts:

First sword - tempered in water = hammer of waters

Second sword - heart of the lion = tried fighting back using white walkers

Third sword - sacrifice of Nissa Nissa = sacrificed many greenseers to conjure the comet that struck the moon

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, JNR said:

I think the traditional timeline is not all that confusing or contradictory.  Works like this:

1. First Men invade Westeros.  The CotF break the Arm, but it's not good enough to stop the invasion.

2. The CotF know the land and have magic and consider weirwoods sacred; the First Men are newcomers and have better weapons and have no respect for weirwoods.  The emerging conflict goes on for a long, long time.

3. The CotF finally try to confine the First Men to the South via a "hammer of the waters" -- very likely a massive tsunami -- aimed at the Neck.  This fails because the continent is far larger than the Arm, but it does succeed in creating the swamps.

4. Because the hammer failed, the CotF realize they cannot stop the First Men's progress.  The First Men, similarly, are awed by the devastating power of the hammer of the waters and realize that while they might win the continent, there will certainly be mass death for hundreds of years against such an enemy, that has magic so powerful when they have zero.  The wise of both sides prevail and the Pact is brokered.

Whether one accepts it or not, that's more or less the account given in the canon, and cited as having occurred long before the Long Night -- two thousand years before, or roughly ten thousand years prior to the time of the story.

Not by coincidence, ten thousand years is also the cited age of Moat Cailin, which logically would have been built after the hammer of the waters... when the First Men would have begun entering the North in significant numbers, and when it became clear that the dry causeway was an extremely strategic point to control.

The main problem I see with the official timeline is that it doesn't explain why the CoTF unleashed the WW against men during the Long Night. When the Last Hero seeked their help they were missing (maybe extint in some regions and hiding in others).

My preferred version to complete the timeline is that resource wars caused by the Long Night forced the CotF to create warriors to defend them from desperate men.

[JNR]

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

The main problem I see with the official timeline is that it doesn't explain why the CoTF unleashed the WW against men during the Long Night.

That would indeed be a problem if it had ever happened in the books.  It's a show-only explanation brought to us by the same good folks who gave us CotF throwing fireballs, Robb's pregnant wife from Essos, an invulnerable Arya who can leap tall buildings with a single bound after being stabbed twice, and most recently, Teleporting Varys, who can travel from Dorne to the middle of Slaver's Bay in the blink of an eye.

[LordImp]

2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

 

Ah yes. The contentious argument about whether these were two separate events! I actually lean towards there being three separate events, but only one hammer of water that broke the land bridges of Dorne and Iron Islands. I think the story of Azor Ahai is an oral history of the Children's actions directed towards invaders...the forging of the three swords equates three different attempts:

First sword - tempered in water = hammer of waters

Second sword - heart of the lion = tried fighting back using white walkers

Third sword - sacrifice of Nissa Nissa = sacrificed many greenseers to conjure the comet that struck the moon

Hmm , very interesting !  Makes sense actually . 

[Dornish Neck Tie]

5 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

 

Ah yes. The contentious argument about whether these were two separate events! I actually lean towards there being three separate events, but only one hammer of water that broke the land bridges of Dorne and Iron Islands. I think the story of Azor Ahai is an oral history of the Children's actions directed towards invaders...the forging of the three swords equates three different attempts:

First sword - tempered in water = hammer of waters

Second sword - heart of the lion = tried fighting back using white walkers

Third sword - sacrifice of Nissa Nissa = sacrificed many greenseers to conjure the comet that struck the moon

This is awesome! Regardless of whether or not these sorts of parallels end up being literally "true" in-story, one of my favorite things about GRRM's writing is that it so actively encourages this sort of free association between seemingly disparate ideas in his world. It's the main reason I keep coming back to this series; there's always another angle to explore with any given event.

ETA: Also ties in with my favorite theme of the story: the truth that matters is where one's faith lies, nothing more and nothing less.

[Tucu]

8 hours ago, JNR said:

That would indeed be a problem if it had ever happened in the books.  It's a show-only explanation brought to us by the same good folks who gave us CotF throwing fireballs, Robb's pregnant wife from Essos, an invulnerable Arya who can leap tall buildings with a single bound after being stabbed twice, and most recently, Teleporting Varys, who can travel from Dorne to the middle of Slaver's Bay in the blink of an eye.

Even if you ignore the show and the hints in the books, how do you explain the CotF being AWOL for years during the Long Night? If the 4000 years of friendly relationship were true, why didn't they help fight an enemy that were slaughtering both races? Why not at least send ravens repeating: "Obsidian kills the White Walkers"?.

[Black Crow]

The one hammer or two used to be a pretty staple argument a couple of years back.The breaking of the Arm is clearly analogous to the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline separating what then became the Island of Britain from the rest of Europe. This was a catastrophic event reckoned to have been accomplished in a matter or hours rather than by slow erosion and even for a time left a series of islands in the channel corresponding to the Stepstones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weald–Artois_Anticline

Arguably GRRM's Neck corresponds to the marshy carselands of the Forth and in particular to the great Flanders Moss, but whilst this area appears to have been hit by the Storrega Slide tsunami which wiped out Doggerland, it was not created by it. I'd therefore be wary of attributing the Neck to a second hammer.

In any case the World Book appeared to settle the argument by clarifying there was just one Hammer

[Black Crow]

37 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Even if you ignore the show and the hints in the books, how do you explain the CotF being AWOL for years during the Long Night? If the 4000 years of friendly relationship were true, why didn't they help fight an enemy that were slaughtering both races? Why not at least send ravens repeating: "Obsidian kills the White Walkers"?.

This is probably the biggest [and most solid] argument against the friendly elves assumptions

[Black Crow]

11 hours ago, JNR said:

Whether one accepts it or not, that's more or less the account given in the canon, and cited as having occurred long before the Long Night -- two thousand years before, or roughly ten thousand years prior to the time of the story.

Not by coincidence, ten thousand years is also the cited age of Moat Cailin, which logically would have been built after the hammer of the waters... when the First Men would have begun entering the North in significant numbers, and when it became clear that the dry causeway was an extremely strategic point to control.

And yet and yet and yet... I want to leave a proper discussion of the timelines for later, when the bicentennial series gets under way, but although this corresponds more or less with the story we're given at the start of the series, GRRM has spent a lot of time since telling us that the timelines are mince and in the World Book the Long Night is placed at 8,000 years ago not 10,000 - not that I have any real confidence in either.

Moat Cailin also has its own problems in its cyclopean architecture, which GRRM has taken some pains to associate with other black basalt structures which appear to have no relation to the present story and may simply be a mystery lying outside the known [!] timelines. An interesting clue here is Catelyn's reference to the original wooden keep having rotted away 1,000 years before. I really can't see this being the case and would suggest that the wooden keep was raised amidst the ruins rather than predating them

[Black Crow]

9 hours ago, JNR said:

That would indeed be a problem if it had ever happened in the books.  It's a show-only explanation brought to us by the same good folks who gave us CotF throwing fireballs, Robb's pregnant wife from Essos, an invulnerable Arya who can leap tall buildings with a single bound after being stabbed twice, and most recently, Teleporting Varys, who can travel from Dorne to the middle of Slaver's Bay in the blink of an eye.

Ah well there we have to disagree because as you know well there are clues enough in books [including the World Book] and SSMs for some of us to come to that conclusion long before the mummers rendered it more explicit and pointed out they'd been working towards that reveal from the very beginning.

[Melifeather]

12 hours ago, LordImp said:

Hmm , very interesting !  Makes sense actually . 

 

9 hours ago, Dornish Neck Tie said:

This is awesome! Regardless of whether or not these sorts of parallels end up being literally "true" in-story, one of my favorite things about GRRM's writing is that it so actively encourages this sort of free association between seemingly disparate ideas in his world. It's the main reason I keep coming back to this series; there's always another angle to explore with any given event.

ETA: Also ties in with my favorite theme of the story: the truth that matters is where one's faith lies, nothing more and nothing less.

Expanding on these cataclysmic events...I think they were the end of a cycle like the turning of a wheel, which in turn lead to a new cycle...a new beginning. It's just that there have been a couple turns of the wheel of time or time loop that got reset without the cataclysmic ending, and now history keeps repeating itself.

[Matthew.]

If the show were going to invent their own fanfiction explanation for the origins of the Others, why would they go with the CotF, a race that barely even exists in the story they're telling?

Before Leaf's appearance, the CotF had only gotten a passing mention from Luwin as an extinct race, and the show has never discussed the Pact, never established that all of Westeros once belonged to the CotF and the giants; until The Door, the show hadn't even established that there had been a war between men and CotF, or that the old gods were the gods of the CotF before they were the gods of men.

The point being, if they were that willing to completely change the nature of the Others, why not change them in a way that's going to connect them more closely to the story that the show is telling--connect them to the stories that a show viewer is more likely to feel invested in? The WW revelation elicited more shrugs (and confusion) than excitement in show-only viewers, and I think the showrunners themselves knew this would be the fan reaction, which is why Hodor is treated as the "big deal" of the episode.

[Black Crow]

35 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

If the show were going to invent their own fanfiction explanation for the origins of the Others, why would they go with the CotF, a race that barely even exists in the story they're telling?

Before Leaf's appearance, the CotF had only gotten a passing mention from Luwin as an extinct race, and the show has never discussed the Pact, never established that all of Westeros once belonged to the CotF and the giants; until The Door, the show hadn't even established that there had been a war between men and CotF, or that the old gods were the gods of the CotF before they were the gods of men.

The point being, if they were that willing to completely change the nature of the Others, why not change them in a way that's going to connect them more closely to the story that the show is telling--connect them to the stories that a show viewer is more likely to feel invested in? The WW revelation elicited more shrugs (and confusion) than excitement in show-only viewers, and I think the showrunners themselves knew this would be the fan reaction, which is why Hodor is treated as the "big deal" of the episode.

Agreed; in short it was an explanation that worked.

We have these magical blue-eyed warriors running around causing mayhem. Why?

Err... it was us. we were losing the battle and it seemed like a good idea at the time...

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Agreed; in short it was an explanation that worked.

We have these magical blue-eyed warriors running around causing mayhem. Why?

Err... it was us. we were losing the battle and it seemed like a good idea at the time...

I'm finding it hard to convey exactly what I mean in words, but I'd almost say that the show's explanation feels so bizarre and discordant, relative to the story they've been telling, that it actually makes me feel more certain that it's coming from GRRM.

If they really wanted to simplify things, they could have just kept the Others as a mysterious, far northern race, or limited them to being personifications of death/winter/blight without any particular origin story, or even credited House Stark with their creation if they wanted to tie them to something familiar. Instead, the creation of the WWs are credited to this race that has almost no narrative prominence, a race that seems to have exited the story as suddenly and unceremoniously as they were thrust into it--the whole affair makes a great deal more sense if you're a book reader, which is why I'm inclined to trust that it is a book revelation.

Edit: Put more succinctly, the CotF and the origins of the WWs, as presented in the show, (to me) feel distinctly like book content that has been crudely shoehorned into the show, which is what makes me feel confident that its not D&D fanfiction.

[Melifeather]

The Game of Thrones DVDs do have an animated history of the Children, the Pact, and the Wall. It even mentions Bran the Builder. While they haven't done a very good job on the show they will have to expand this backstory if they're want to create an ending for Bran and the Others that makes sense.

[Black Crow]

19 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

I'm finding it hard to convey exactly what I mean in words, but I'd almost say that the show's explanation feels so bizarre and discordant, relative to the story they've been telling, that it actually makes me feel more certain that it's coming from GRRM.

If they really wanted to simplify things, they could have just kept the Others as a mysterious, far northern race, or limited them to being personifications of death/winter/blight without any particular origin story, or even credited House Stark with their creation if they wanted to tie them to something familiar. Instead, the creation of the WWs are credited to this race that has almost no narrative prominence, a race that seems to have exited the story as suddenly and unceremoniously as they were thrust into it--the whole affair makes a great deal more sense if you're a book reader, which is why I'm inclined to trust that it is a book revelation.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd take issue with you on this because in the first place as we've discussed there are clues enough in the books and that infamous Barcelona SSM for book readers who are prepared to look for them.

As to the mummers version, I feel here that given the nature of the beast there is even more of an imperative to answer the question of who they are and why, hence the reveal, although I do agree that thus far it looks as though the only reason for introducing the three fingered tree-huggers is to provide that explanation.