Heresy 189

[KirnMalidus]

6 hours ago, Tucu said:

I would expect the opposite to be true. A one in a million chance for men to be born a greenseer would imply a few are born each generation and they seem to live longer that normal people. At a time of low magic and forgotten rituals we know of 2 or 3 (if we count Euron) people with the right blood.

The CoTF greenseers on the other hand are rare ("once in a great while") and they live shorter lives than the rest of the CoTF ("their quick years upon the earth are few")

I think that is relative to the lifespan of other CoTF, who live longer than humans. "Few" years upon the Earth for a CoTF greenseer could still be longer than a normal human lifespan, especially in Westeros where I think 40-50 is considered quite old.

[Tucu]

8 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Not at all - they live long in the wood - as obviously, has Bloodraven.

I took that part as their spirit/conciousness living inside the trees after their bodies have died. BR has not reached that point yet; he is still in his quick years (althought extended beyond normal).

Edit: I expect the number of human greenseers in the trees to have exceeded the number of CoTF greenseers a few thousand years ago.

[Tucu]

Just now, KirnMalidus said:

I think that is relative to the lifespan of other CoTF, who live longer than humans. "Few" years upon the Earth for a CoTF greenseer could still be longer than a normal human lifespan, especially in Westeros where I think 40-50 is considered quite old.

I agree that they are "Few" years when compared to other CoTF; but the low birth rate and rarity would still make CoTF greenseers a rare resource.

[Melifeather]

Does the text state anywhere that the Children have low birth rates? I think they are few because so many have been sacrificed to work magic weapons.

[Tucu]

3 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Does the text state anywhere that the Children have low birth rates? I think they are few because so many have been sacrificed to work magic weapons.

Leaf says: "Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them."

[Black Crow]

33 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I took that part as their spirit/conciousness living inside the trees after their bodies have died. BR has not reached that point yet; he is still in his quick years (althought extended beyond normal).

Edit: I expect the number of human greenseers in the trees to have exceeded the number of CoTF greenseers a few thousand years ago.

I tend to regard "quick" as living and walking around before they eat the paste and are attached to the tree. There's no reason to suppose there were large numbers of human greenseers and in any case Bloodraven is identified as the last one.

[Black Crow]

18 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Does the text state anywhere that the Children have low birth rates? I think they are few because so many have been sacrificed to work magic weapons.

What Tucu said - which is why their sacrifices were so significant

[Black Crow]

36 minutes ago, KirnMalidus said:

I think that is relative to the lifespan of other CoTF, who live longer than humans. "Few" years upon the Earth for a CoTF greenseer could still be longer than a normal human lifespan, especially in Westeros where I think 40-50 is considered quite old.

[Tucu]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I tend to regard "quick" as living and walking around before they eat the paste and are attached to the tree. There's no reason to suppose there were large numbers of human greenseers and in any case Bloodraven is identified as the last one.

That would depend on what you mean by large numbers. I imagine a few (maybe 5 or 10) active human greenseers at any given time while the weirwoods were living all over Westeros. The legends say that the Stark killed the Warg Kings and their greenseers (more than one).

The spirits of these human greenseers have now passed into the trees and the number has been growing for 10000 years. Given the rate of creation of human greenseers, the count of spirits of human greenseers must have surpassed the count of spirits of CoTF greenseers accumulated during the 22000 years they have spoken the True Tongue.

[Melifeather]

I'd like to know more about the green men. I've just begun listening to the audio version of The Eye of the World which is book one in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It's uncanny how many similar elements there are! There are striking similarities to Bran's story including things that echo greenseers, green men, weirwood groves, ogres/giants, a false spring, an all seeing eye, a wheel of time, tunnels under the ground to speed up travel, humans that communicate with wolves, a one true source referred to as the light, and a dark one/force. The green man in The Eye of the World is in possession of the all-seeing Eye of the World. Should we anticipate that the green men in ASOIAF are all watching Westeros from the Isle of Men in the center of the Gods Eye? Maybe they are the true godhead? Certainly the name of the lake seems to suggest its an important place and not just the location of the Pact.

[Voice]

15 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Actually, I'm not disagreeing with the comparison, I think a "Dothraki-esque" invasion of men - perhaps under the leadership of a Magnar - is precisely what prompted the Breaking of the Arm of Dorne, and then the flooding of the Neck--they didn't go to such extreme measures as a futile gesture against men that had already settled the land, they were attempting to cut off an active invasion. 

What I think may have been lost over the course of history is that some men had already settled Westeros, and some may have already had an existing friendship with the CotF, such as the crannogmen, and that lumping all of these cultures together under the label of "First Men" is probably an oversimplification, a natural consequence of men in Westeros becoming culturally homogenized after the Pact--with some notable outliers, like the Iron Born.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

"Reaching" him is not the same as seeing him and unable to reach him.May i point out with Bran the trees were already calling him so he was expected.

Sure. But Bran was not destined for just any tree. His attendance was requested at a specific hollow.

While I'm the last person to disapprove of splitting semantic hairs, I must point out that these particular hairs are still growing from an entity that is entirely speculative.

We do not know anyone was able to "see" the Last Hero until he was rescued.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Why is it an assumption that their greenseers were somehow unable to you know..Use its many eyes and skins to see TLH?That's lke asking a Dr why he gives injections.

Because the tale of the Last Hero mentions no greenseer, let alone several.

Thus, it is an assumption to assume one or several existed. It is a further assumption to suggest that such presumed greenseer(s) was able to see and/or reach the Last Hero until he was eventually reached.

What you are suggesting is of course possible, but remains an assumption.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

The COTF and the greenseers are playing a game of thrones yes.Come now Voice don't play ignorant.The theme of concealing oneself from foes by means of trickery,diversions,backstabbing etc has been in this series since book one.

Sure, that is a common theme. But we have no reason to attribute such behavior to the cotf. If anything, theirs seems to be the opposite modus operandi.

And again, if the cotf desired concealment, sending forth a race of ice zombies wasn't the best way to remain under the radar. Folks tend to notice attacks that supernatural.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Not saying its not possible,i'm saying i've yet to see the point as to why in your theory the others wanted to lean the language of the COTF.They are all everyone of them "Those who sing the songs of earth" and in this case i think BR was more broad than specific.Songs of earth means eveything.The songs of nature itself.

Well, language is power.

Words are wind.

The words matter.

And, winter is coming.

I agree that the cotf's songs were/are songs of nature. But what would a man capable of understanding nature's songs be capable of doing?

Quite a lot, I'm thinking.

I think he would be able to use nature in a way it had not previously been used.

And while you may not believe the Others would have any use for the language of the cotf, I would argue that bilingualism is a priceless tool to have at anyone's disposal, but there is one glaring reason to learn it in the series, and Leaf tells us what it is.

Before I explain that point, let me mention that the Others seem to be making use of the language Brandon the Builder learned from the cotf even to this day:

 

 

Quote

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.

 

Note that the language bears the timbre of sounds of nature. And Will recognized it immediately as a language that he does not know.

 

I attribute the True Tongue to the trees:

 

Quote

I cannot go home, she thought, but I dare not stay here much longer. The quiet of the woods unnerved her. Asha had spent her life on islands and on ships. The sea was never silent. The sound of the waves washing against a rocky shore was in her blood, but there were no waves at Deepwood Motte … only the trees, the endless trees, soldier pines and sentinels, beech and ash and ancient oaks, chestnut trees and ironwoods and firs. The sound they made was softer than the sea, and she heard it only when the wind was blowing; then the sighing seemed to come from all around her, as if the trees were whispering to one another in some language that she could not understand.

 

But that is another theory.

 

This brings me to the reason why the Brandon, the Last Hero, and thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, would want to learn their language:

 

Quote

"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

 

It's hella old. Leaf told us it contains songs that songs sung in it are ten thousand years old. That is a hard frame of reference to fathom, let alone appreciate in English. (Or, the Common Tongue.)

But anyway, the True Tongue contains songs of events of great antiquity. Of what man cannot speak, he must pass over in silence. In this way, another language can let us see, experience, and understand new things that are only "new" because we didn't previously know the language. Hopefully, that makes sense. Hard to explain this stuff...

So it's hella old, but that's not all. Look at what but one handed-down fragment tells us. It's rather extraordinary:

Quote

Their song and music was said to be as beautiful as they were, but what they sang of is not remembered save in small fragments handed down from ancient days. Maester Childer's Winter's Kings, or the Legends and Lineages of the Starks of Winterfell contains a part of a ballad alleged to tell of the time Brandon the Builder sought the aid of the children while raising the Wall. He was taken to a secret place to meet with them, but could not at first understand their speech, which was described as sounding like the song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water. The manner in which Brandon learned to comprehend the speech of the children is a tale in itself, and not worth repeating here. But it seems clear that their speech originated, or drew inspiration from, the sounds they heard every day.

 

The first part of this passage tells us that Brandon the Builder did what the books attribute to the Last Hero: sought the aid of the cotf in the Long Night.

One more feather in our cap, but far from the most meaningful. Look at the description of their speech. It sounds not unlike the cracking of ice on a winter lake. And the cold, cracking distinction may only be due to frozen vocal folds. Otherwise, I'm fairly certain the Others speak a dialect of the True Tongue.

The learning of this language may even be what makes existence as an Other possible. Take note of the passage below:

 

Quote

"You will never walk again," the three-eyed crow had promised, "but you will fly." Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from someplace far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck his skin when they heard the songs.

 

But, such inhuman consequences are not enough to stop Brandons from yearning to learn to speak the sounds of nature:

 

Quote

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them . . . not quite, not truly, but almost . . . as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. "Though it is stronger in some than in others," she warned.

 

I'm thinking the Last Hero shared Bran's ambition in this regard, and succeeded in it.

 

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

What are you talking about,no on knows the greenseers are alive.What better way if you want to operate in secret but to create the White walkers and have them be blamed for everything...That's genius.Does anyboy know the greenseers are operational ? Anyone? Nope.

 

Ugh. Yes. Today, no one knows the greenseers are alive. But, as I was saying, that was not always the case. For most of Westeros' history, the continents inhabitants knew the greenseers were alive.

The anonymity of which you speak is of recent development.

And if they sought to retain that newfound anonymity, sending out a fresh batch of ice zombies was the wrong way to go about it.

Think about it. If they had not sent the Others again, no one would be seeking them out. For an omniscient race attempting stay under the radar, they don't seem to understand cause and effect very well.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

You misunderstand the COTF aren't responsible for the faiths in Asshai.The greensers here are just playing at being R'hollor.Think Stargate.The Egyptian gods were myth,the Gaould made them real by taking on their persona.Turned themselves into the gods that the people believed.

 

I getcha. I'm just hesitant to christen the cotf as the cause of faith in R'hllor.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Peace ,what peace? Men went back warring against each other like they always did,some COTF sided with some humans and the fighting continued.Men continued to breed relenlessly and some still cut down and warred with the COTF.There was no peace.

 

You misunderstand me. The "peace" the cotf sought was not their own. They sought peace for the trees. The Long Night occurred after thousands of years of that peace, and was a time in which the First Men converted to the Old Gods.

Again, by the time of the Andal Invasion, it must be remembered that the First Men and the cotf laid aside petty feuds and fought the Andals together... they attempted to protect the trees from the Andals together.

That may not seem like a big deal to some, but it seems like a big deal to me. Imagine fighting fellow human beings to protect the interest of a non-human race and hallucinogenic trees.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

We have no idea if all the COTF and the greenseers  that lived in Westeros came together and fought as one.I highly doubt it.We certainly don't know if "The Pact" represented the desires of ALL the greenseers and COTF.That's the same umbrella type mentality shown toward the Indians.

 

It is the text as presented. And that is all we have.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Skinchanging is rare in the SOUTH not beyond the Wall.Really??? We are told they existed as far as the LOAW,Summer Isle,we got a contingent on the IOF.Yeah they were all over Westeros and some of them may have been untouched by war.

 

We are told the cotf existed from Dorne to just south of the Lands of Always Winter, but not within the LoAW... and that is not the same thing as "greenseers" existing all over Westeros. Clearly, even the cotf were not incredibly populous. Thus, I would expect a greenseeing child of the forest to be an incredibly rare presence. We have no reason to assume there were many with such talents.

 

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Who else are controlling and will be controlling the Wights.And the end of this we are going to see Wights fighting Wights.

 

As the Wall blocks the warg-bond, I would assume it is a different power entirely. One that is capable of passing through ice.

In my thinking, Brandon was capable of building the Wall only because he wielded an Other-power.

[Black Crow]

I'm not sure about this business of "speaking" as in physically speaking the Old Tongue. I've suggested before that when the tree-huggers spoke with Bran the Builder they did so in his head rather than using an audible speech. What's interesting is that they say they sing the songs of the earth and their speech sounds like water on stones etc., just as Craster's boys sound like breaking ice; not because they suffer from having frozen larynx but because they sing the song of Ice; and to those who do not understand either [ie; most humans] they pick up on the song; the theme that defines them as an aura, but not the words which cannot be formed by a human tongue, because its all in the mind.

And on that note, to bed. Good night all.

[Dornish Neck Tie]

20 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'm also mindful of the very sensible suggestion someone made that the First Men were so named not because they were the first men to come to Westeros, but because they were First among them, ie; the tribal aristos.

Yes, I like this. From what we're shown of the more prestigious, and therefore likely more "pure" in ancestry, First Men and other older houses, many of them seem so distinct from one another (Starks, crannogmen, Daynes, Hightowers, Blackwoods, Iron Born?, etc.) as to hint that they do not really have a population of common origin.

We still don't have a good answer for what may have set off a Long Night allegedly in between the Pact and the start of the Andal Invasions. What if it was just an escalation of feuding between the powerful houses that were around before the Andal historians showed up? All the old First Men houses would just tell the record-keepers, "We were here first!" With that information, there was no better answer than to just lump all the peoples that were here before the Andals into one population.

[Dornish Neck Tie]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'm not sure about this business of "speaking" as in physically speaking the Old Tongue. I've suggested before that when the tree-huggers spoke with Bran the Builder they did so in his head rather than using an audible speech. What's interesting is that they say they sing the songs of the earth and their speech sounds like water on stones etc., just as Craster's boys sound like breaking ice; not because they suffer from having frozen larynx but because they sing the song of Ice; and to those who do not understand either [ie; most humans] they pick up on the song; the theme that defines them as an aura, but not the words which cannot be formed by a human tongue, because its all in the mind.

And on that note, to bed. Good night all.

Those of us who have imbibed in certain fungi can attest beyond doubt to the fact that the sounds of the natural world very much do speak their own sort of language.

 

ETA: Seems to me the "song of the earth" is nothing more than, well, everything. In the way that Eru Iluvatar's harmony is described as a "song," though in the story's version of reality, the "song" is literally the physical universe itself.

[Phillip Frye]

I think that another possible reason why the First Men appear to have separate and distinct cultures is that they have been physically separated from each other by a sea of Andals for a long time, except for the Ironborn, who are separated by a real sea.

[Phillip Frye]

On 7/21/2016 at 2:24 PM, Black Crow said:

In that case the "door" might actually be something akin to the Black Gate.

What do you mean "akin to"?

[Dornish Neck Tie]

We're not actually given any explicit evidence that the houses we see referred to as First Men are descendants of a distinct, homogenous population/culture. The closest thing we have to a common link for all First Men is bronze, which is more a sign of a shared technological era than evidence of a cultural identity. Remember, the histories that our POV characters are taught come from Andal institutional knowledge, even in such old and powerful First Men houses as the Starks. In the eyes of the septons who first put the events of Old Westeros to paper, the First Men were just everyone who was already here before their own people. Especially since each of these widespread, somewhat isolated kingdoms would only naturally claim to be the First Men to any new people who showed up.

 

ETA: The Children, who were still generally unfamiliar with humans during the early wars, likely would have seen the bronze weapons as a sign of cultural identity, and so would have included language referring to bronze in an ancient Pact made with almost any contemporary human faction.

[Phillip Frye]

On 7/21/2016 at 10:12 AM, Black Crow said:

The significant word in both passages is Dreamer. I'm happy with the notion that Bryn Blackwood had greendreams just as Jojen Reed did, but he didn't become a greenseer until he was fed the magic paste and hooked up to his tree by the three-fingered lot.

I thought that we all agreed that the upgrade from skinchanger to greenseer took place in the dark on Level III.  That would be the most logical time that the trees would have contacted him (during his period of vulnerability).  Then, when he arrived at The Wall, the call from the Greeshka weirwoods became too strong and he went to the cave to be consumed by the fungus trees.

On the other hand, I would agree that Bloodraven was never a warg, unlike Varamyr Sixskins.

[Phillip Frye]

4 minutes ago, Dornish Neck Tie said:

We're not actually given any explicit evidence that the houses we see referred to as First Men are descendants of a distinct, homogenous population/culture. The closest thing we have to a common link for all First Men is bronze, which is more a sign of a shared technological era than evidence of a cultural identity. Remember, the histories that our POV characters are taught come from Andal institutional knowledge, even in such old and powerful First Men houses as the Starks. In the eyes of the septons who first put the events of Old Westeros to paper, the First Men were just everyone who was already here before their own people. Especially since each of these widespread, somewhat isolated kingdoms would only naturally claim to be the First Men to any new people who showed up.

There are some similarities in culture between the Ironborn, Crannogmen, and the Sistermen, especially in the worship of the Storm God (Ironborn and Sistermen) and the present of basalt structures in the vicinity (Crannogmen and Sistermen).

[Dornish Neck Tie]

Just now, Phillip Frye said:

There are some similarities in culture between the Ironborn, Crannogmen, and the Sistermen, especially in the worship of the Storm God (Ironborn and Sistermen) and the present of basalt structures in the vicinity (Crannogmen and Sistermen).

 

True, but I strongly suspect that the Storm God/Drowned God duality is just a maritime-themed iteration of the CotF-created hive mind known more commonly as the Old Gods, and therefore just evidence of CotF influence post-settlement.

As for the mystery of the basalt structures, I feel they are nothing more than a hazy tale of the way, way, way, way back meant to add texture to GRRM's world-building. I imagine the reason these things are so tantalizing in the first place is because we all know deep down that they will always remain part of the foggy unknown.