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House Codd, blind white fish and the Deep Ones


Falcon2908

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The sigil of House Codd is a white fish on a black background. 

There are many instances of white fish being found in many parts of the world in black waters.

For example in Brans POV chapter Beyond the Wall: 

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Under the hill they still had food to eat. A hundred kinds of mushrooms grew down here. Blind white fish swam in the black river, but they tasted just as good as fish with eyes once you cooked them up

In the ash river of Asshai:

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The ships bring casks of freshwater too. The waters of the Ash glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with a pale green phosphorescence by night, and such fish as swim in the river are blind and twisted, so deformed and hideous to look upon that only fools and shadowbinders will eat of their flesh

Arianne in TWOW  (This was inside a CoTF cave btw, hmmmmmmmm! ):

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Their passageway led down to a still black pool, where they discovered the girl up to her waist in water, catching blind white fish with her bare hands, her torch burning red and smoky in the sand where she had planted it.

 

 

 

So whats the deal with all these white fish thriving in black water bodies?
Even the sigil of House Codd resembles a white fish inside a black pool.

Could there be a connection between the two?

Now, the Deep Ones are a race of half men-half fish from the Lovecraftinan universe who regularly come out of the ocean and mate with human women. GRRM has also referenced them in the ASOIAF universe.

In the World of Ice and Fire, it is theorised by some Maesters that the oily black structures throughout the world (such as the sea stone chair) are built by these Deep Ones.

In Cracklaw Point, there are tales of some creatures called "Squishers" who come out of the sea to steal children. They eat the boys but keep the girls for mating. So, they sound very similar to the Deep Ones.

 

So what I'm suggesting here is that the people of House Codd have descended from the Deep Ones/Squishers!

They even have a fishy appearance!

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"Is that a threat?" One of the Codds pushed to his feet. A big man, but pop-eyed and wide of mouth, with dead white flesh. He looked as if his father had sired him on a fish, but he still wore a longsword. "Dagon Codd yields to no man."

The words of House Codd are "Though all men do despise us".

"all men", "despise us". Despise them for what? All men despise the Codds for kidnapping mens's wives and mating with them! 

Yes, men generally refers to "humans", but I think GRRM is being clever here with wordplay.

 

 

TLDR; House Codd is descended from a race of half-human half-fish species.

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House Codd has been mentioned as being descenced from salt wives and thralls. How they rose to nobility is a tough question.

But I was more interested in the white blind fish, I was thinking that perhaps George has not mentioned them just for world building but these underground rivers meet and run throughout. That there is passage underneath the wall through these rivers, the white blind fish are the same in Dorne and in BR's cave. I still do not know how to connect this to Asshai though, underground rivers cannot span continents and the waters of Asshai look like they had a toxic chemical spill or they are radioactive. 

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7 minutes ago, Bloody Ben Blackwood said:

House Codd has been mentioned as being descenced from salt wives and thralls. How they rose to nobility is a tough question.

But I was more interested in the white blind fish, I was thinking that perhaps George has not mentioned them just for world building but these underground rivers meet and run throughout. That there is passage underneath the wall through these rivers, the white blind fish are the same in Dorne and in BR's cave. I still do not know how to connect this to Asshai though, underground rivers cannot span continents and the waters of Asshai look like they had a toxic chemical spill or they are radioactive. 

The massive sunless sea right? I believe in that. Though I don't know for what purpose. Maybe in TWOW we'll see Bran sailing through these underground rivers/sea for whatever reason

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Isn't the sigil of House Codd a silver codfish?

Can't say I necessarily buy into their interbreeding with the Deep Ones, if for no other reason than that should have been a mark in their favor, no?  The Grey King is supposed to have wed a mermaid, and aren't merlings/squishers/deep ones all the same thing?  If its true, though, it would be no different than House Borrell, whose members tend to have webbed hands and feet, allegedly because they interbred with the squishers of Craclaw folklore.

I think if there were a Deep One/human interbreeding scandal, its more likely to be with House Manderly.

 

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55 minutes ago, estermonty python said:

 

I think if there were a Deep One/human interbreeding scandal, its more likely to be with House Manderly.

 

But House Manderly is originally from the banks of the Mander river of the Reach...

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There doesn't need to be a physical connection between these  underground fish. Could be convergent evolution, and in each location the base species is different, but the environment led to albinism and blindness over hundreds of generations.

Yeah, house Codd has the "Innsmouth look" and so do many Sistermen. Note that the islands they live on are on opposite sides of the continent, so again they have undergone a similar metamorphosis and are unlikely to have interbred worth mentioning.

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Nicely done, @Falcon2908. I think there are pretty decent hints that the Deep Ones are going to be prominent in this story.

 

This entire scene in ADWD gives off major hints of some historical connection between oily black stone, COTF and the half-men, half-fish again:

The description of Moat Cailin - 

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The air was wet and heavy, and shallow pools of water dotted the ground. Reek picked his way between them carefully, following the remnants of the log-and-plank road that Robb Stark's vanguard had laid down across the soft ground to speed the passage of his host. Where once a mighty curtain wall had stood, only scattered stones remained, blocks of black basalt so large it must once have taken a hundred men to hoist them into place. Some had sunk so deep into the bog that only a corner showed; others lay strewn about like some god's abandoned toys, cracked and crumbling, spotted with lichen. Last night's rain had left the huge stones wet and glistening, and the morning sunlight made them look as if they were coated in some fine black oil.

A call back to the oily black stone which Asshai, Yeen, the Seastone Chair, etc have been made of. In Yeen, similar wording is used -

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Yeen is built entirely of oily black stone, in blocks so large it would require a dozen elephants to move them.

 

Callback to the Children of the Forest, same chapter:

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He was being watched. He could feel the eyes. When he looked up, he caught a glimpse of pale faces peering from behind the battlements of the Gatehouse Tower and through the broken masonry that crowned the Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called down the hammer of the waters to break the lands of Westeros in two. 

 

As you have highlighted, inside the tower were the Ironborn - specifically the Codds, who serve as the callback to the Deep Ones.

 

I'm pretty sure you're on to something here, and this scene seems like it is a echo of some historical event.

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3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Nicely done, @Falcon2908. I think there are pretty decent hints that the Deep Ones are going to be prominent in this story.

 

This entire scene in ADWD gives off major hints of some historical connection between oily black stone, COTF and the half-men, half-fish again:

The description of Moat Cailin - 

A call back to the oily black stone which Asshai, Yeen, the Seastone Chair, etc have been made of. In Yeen, similar wording is used -

 

Callback to the Children of the Forest, same chapter:

 

As you have highlighted, inside the tower were the Ironborn - specifically the Codds, who serve as the callback to the Deep Ones.

 

I'm pretty sure you're on to something here, and this scene seems like it is a echo of some historical event.

Thanks!!

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12 hours ago, Falcon2908 said:

The massive sunless sea right? I believe in that. Though I don't know for what purpose. Maybe in TWOW we'll see Bran sailing through these underground rivers/sea for whatever reason

Yea I can definitely see Bran going through underground rivers. George has a thing for tunnels.

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11 minutes ago, King Merrett I Frey said:

Yea I can definitely see Bran going through underground rivers. George has a thing for tunnels.

 

Especially with the "dead" greenseers around, it could draw a lot of cool parallels to the river Styx and leading the souls of those gone to the underworld

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On 9/7/2016 at 9:39 AM, Falcon2908 said:

But House Manderly is originally from the banks of the Mander river of the Reach...

Yup!  Interestingly we don't know exactly where Dunstonbury is along the Mander, or who currently owns the castle and its lands (since the Peakes were stripped of it in one of the Blackfyre Rebellions - I think the second).  We really have no idea what's in the Sunset Sea, other than the rumors that the merlings there are not as scary as the merlings in the Shivering Sea.  The fact that the Grey King is rumored to have wed a mermaid, and that one of the small islands by the Arbor conquered by Euron and his fleet is called "Mermaid's Isle" suggests that there is at least a mermaid folklore about the region.  The lower floors of the Hightower are also made of that mysterious smooth black stone (though there is some debate over whether its supposed to be the same oily stone that makes the seastone chair, or the fused stone of the Volantenes).    The fact that the Manderlys are from the Reach, I think, makes it MORE likely that they may have made some sort of marriage pact with the merlings at some point in an attempt to wrest control of the region, and it backfired somehow. 

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Maybe the waters of the Ash are filled with dinoflagelates...

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The Mosquito Bioluminscent Bay on the Island of Vieques, Puerto Rico is the most bioluminescent in the World. It contains up to 160,000 microscopic dinoflagelates per liter of water.

When agitated, these microscopic organisms (Pyrodinium bahamense or swirling fire) reacts emitting a blue-green light for about a decimal of a second.

There are other bioluminescent bays around the island, but the Mosquito Bio Bay is the one that shines with the most intensity, its shallow and small entrance from the sea impedes the waves from washing away the dinoflagellates; and the mangrove trees, with their decomposition process, provides abundant food for the micro-organisms

 

Quoted from somewhere on the World Wide Web. 

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Blind cave fish are a real thing. They are also noted for lack of pigmentation. They are either transparent or white in color. Mammoth Cave in Kentucky has a large population and they look white. (I've seen them)

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The Amblyopsidae are a fish family commonly referred to as cavefish, blindfish, or swampfish. They are small freshwater fish found in the dark environments of swamps, caves, and deep lakes in the eastern half of the United States. Like other troglobites, amblyopsids exhibit adaptations to these dark environments, including the lack of functional eyes and, in some species, the absence of pigmentation

To me, GRRM is just adding some fauna to the scene that would normally be living there.

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I think the Stokeworths resemblance to fishes just remarks that they are ugly. On Mandons, his eyes are said to be fish-like to remark that they don't express any emotions, so he's unpredictable.

The Codds looking fish-like may be just a tie to their banner.

The sistermen and the dudes on frog isle near Sothoryos is another story tho...

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