The Long Night's Watch - the Undead Companions of the Last Hero

[LmL]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

No, this one:

The 1000 captives 'fed to the weirwood' whereafter the eyes are carved into the trees are the 'Garths'?

(P.S. 'Dorne was broken' is pun on 'Dawn was broken')

Or this one:

How is the 'breaking' supposed to relate to the Long Night in terms of timeline?  Taken in conjunction with the first quote, in the second quote it's insinuated that the 'Pact' not the 'Breaking' might have involved the mass sacrifice.  Also, falling not rising sea levels should accompany an ice age (isn't that what we're presuming 'the Long Night' to be in essence?).  All very confusing.  I tried to follow the 'Heretic' discussion which attempted to sort out the timeline, but I'm not sure they reached consensus either.  If the 'breaking of the earth' involved 'breaking of the moon,' that probably required a mass sacrifice.  Or maybe it's the Breaking that's the natural event -- as interpreted by the skeptic of the second quote -- and the human response to it resulting in the Pact that's the 'unnatural' intervention...Instead of being representative of love and harmony, maybe the forging of the Pact is the original sin.  As we've seen, building things paradoxically often involves breaking more things -- e.g. the sacrifices consecrating the constructions of the Red Keep, the Wall, Winterfell, etc.  I think we're supposed to ask ourselves if 'Brandon the Builder' -- a leading candidate for the Night's King -- was perhaps morally suspect, despite being feted as a construction hero, vs. 'Brandon the Breaker' with his less glamorous epithet as the real hero?  This is also how I imagine the conclusion of the story, in particular the current Bran's arc, who may very well have to break something evil that was built in the past.

My timeline adjustment is actually very simple, and it is dictated by the inescapable conclusion that the Hammer of the Waters was a moon meteor.  Simply move the hammer of the waters up to the beginning of the Long Night, and you've got it, I think. 

Ok, so the Hammer and the following Pact basically divides the Dawn Age from the Age of Heroes. All of that stays the same, but moves up.  The key thing to understand is that the LN was a bottleneck event, both cultural and genetic. No established power structures would survive intact through a decade of the anarchy and famine which would occur if the sun were blotted out for a decade or more.  Also, the LN was felt around the known world, so it's something of a divider for history, a common marker, and I believe we can usually tell if an event happened before or after this bottleneck. So, now it goes like this:

1. Dawn Age - age of fable, mostly forgotten because it was before the LN
2. hammer falls - kaboom. Almost certainly blood magic used to bring down the moon
3. LN ensues, most people die
4. cotf help FM, LN ended, Pact signed. Why would an entire culture switch religions? They were almost eradicated, old ways destroyed cotf saved their ass. Simple!
5. Age of Heroes, where all the current orders of power are established.  All the great houses, things like the citadel, they would have risen up soon after the great cleansing, as man got up off the mat after the LN. Any power structure existant today would not date back to before the LN IMO.

And that's pretty much it

[ravenous reader]

8 minutes ago, LmL said:

hammer falls - kaboom.

That's it?  

Nothing about the psychopathic semen-cloaking of the world..?

[Isobel Harper]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Hey Isobell!  Nothing passes you by, my dear...

'Semen cloaks' must be the greatest anagram of all time!  

Indeed. That is the grey-green intention of Littlefinger -- to cloak the world in his lemmonous-smellonous semen cloak --

Unless we stop him...

!

I literally shuddered when I read this.  

[ravenous reader]

Or should we call it the 'white-washing'...

[ravenous reader]

3 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

I literally shuddered when I read this.  

We should shudder.

I'm not joking.  

[ravenous reader]

Littlefinger with his little hands...LOL

[ravenous reader]

Dear darling LmL--

I only hope your fans are as adoring as I am..

'kaboom' -- the logic is staggering!

[LmL]

2 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Dear darling LmL--

I only hope your fans are as adoring as I am..

'kaboom' -- the logic is staggering!

Do you mean to say you like my proposed timeline? Sometimes your banter is so witty I find myself perplexed. You guys were on a roll there with you gowns of silver man milk...

[Isobel Harper]

8 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Littlefinger with his little hands...LOL

[Lost Melnibonean]

9 hours ago, LmL said:

My timeline adjustment is actually very simple, and it is dictated by the inescapable conclusion that the Hammer of the Waters was a moon meteor.  Simply move the hammer of the waters up to the beginning of the Long Night, and you've got it, I think. 

Ok, so the Hammer and the following Pact basically divides the Dawn Age from the Age of Heroes. All of that stays the same, but moves up.  The key thing to understand is that the LN was a bottleneck event, both cultural and genetic. No established power structures would survive intact through a decade of the anarchy and famine which would occur if the sun were blotted out for a decade or more.  Also, the LN was felt around the known world, so it's something of a divider for history, a common marker, and I believe we can usually tell if an event happened before or after this bottleneck. So, now it goes like this:

1. Dawn Age - age of fable, mostly forgotten because it was before the LN
2. hammer falls - kaboom. Almost certainly blood magic used to bring down the moon
3. LN ensues, most people die
4. cotf help FM, LN ended, Pact signed. Why would an entire culture switch religions? They were almost eradicated, old ways destroyed cotf saved their ass. Simple!
5. Age of Heroes, where all the current orders of power are established.  All the great houses, things like the citadel, they would have risen up soon after the great cleansing, as man got up off the mat after the LN. Any power structure existant today would not date back to before the LN IMO.

And that's pretty much it

Inescapable? 

[Lost Melnibonean]

9 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

I literally shuddered when I read this.  

Whoa.

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Inescapable? 

Yeah, are you up to date on my essays? I think the evidence is quite overwhelming. I am as sure that the Hammer was a moon meteor as I am that moon meteors caused the Long Night. Obviously I could be entirely self deluded and wrong about everything, but barring that, yes, the evidence pointing to the hammer being a moon meteor is inescapable and overwhelming. 

[Bluetiger]

Mythical Astronomy translations to Polish update– 04.02.2017

Finished:
– GRRM is writing modern mythology (Polish version ~4 760 words)
– Astronomy Explains the Legends of Ice and Fire (PL 15 490 words)

Not finished yet:
– Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai (PL 16 487 words),  5 440 words left.

We currently have 36 737 words - about 6% of entire series.

We've noticed that translated versions are on average 10-13% shorter, so when we're done, Mythical Astronomy will have about 211 000 words - for comparison: GOT has 284 000 words.

 ‘Mythical Astronomy’ word count:

– George R.R. Martin is writing modern mythology (5 232)
– Black and Bloody Tides (9 235)
– Astronomy Explains the Legends of Ice and Fire (17 793)
– Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai (24 195)
– Waves of Night and Moon Blood (29 041)
– The Mountain vs. The Viper & the Hammer of Waters (31 248)
– Tyrion Targaryen (22 866)
– Lucifer Means Lightbringer (15 106)
– The Grey King and the Sea Dragon (26 045)
– The Last Hero and the King of Corn (23 656))
– King of Winter, Lord of Death (12 234)
– The Long Night’s Watch (22 823)

Overall: 239 474 words

For comparison:
ASOIAF (1 770 000 words)
LOTR (474 000 words)
Wheel of Time (3 304 000 words)
Malazan (3 325 000 words)
Hobbit (95 022 words).

If Mythical Astronomy were a book, it'd be a quite long novel!

So I guess @LmL can call himself self-published writer

[Lost Melnibonean]

2 hours ago, LmL said:

Yeah, are you up to date on my essays? I think the evidence is quite overwhelming. I am as sure that the Hammer was a moon meteor as I am that moon meteors caused the Long Night. Obviously I could be entirely self deluded and wrong about everything, but barring that, yes, the evidence pointing to the hammer being a moon meteor is inescapable and overwhelming. 

Can you give me an abridged argument, or is it necessary to read through everything you've written? (You could just state some assumptions and let me follow up on those if necessary.) 

[ravenous reader]

10 hours ago, LmL said:

Do you mean to say you like my proposed timeline? Sometimes your banter is so witty I find myself perplexed.

That's very kind of you to say-- sometimes my banter is not so much witty but so absurd I even find myself perplexed!  

Your timeline makes sense from a symbolic perspective, except I suspect you will get lots of pushback from various detractors (less 'adoring', less symbolically-inclined, and therefore less enthusiastic than myself) since it conflicts with a lot of the 'facts' GRRM has inserted into his 'canon' in order to deliberately confuse us -- as evidenced by lack of consensus on the recent 'Heretic' timeline thread (could you make head or tail of any of that discussion?)  

Just two questions:

1.  The Hammer of the Waters resulted in inundation of the land and sea levels rising, right?  Then how come in this account of the Long Night, brought to my attention by @LynnS when we were discussing her upcoming essay on the Wall, the sea levels fell in conjunction with the water becoming locked up in ice, as is consistent with an ice age?  

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The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Long Night

As the First Men established their realms following the Pact, little troubled them save their own feuds and wars, or so the histories tell us. It is also from these histories that we learn of the Long Night, when a season of winter came that lasted a generation—a generation in which children were born, grew into adulthood, and in many cases died without ever seeing the spring. Indeed, some of the old wives' tales say that they never even beheld the light of day, so complete was the winter that fell on the world. 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.

• following Pact
• rivers frozen
• i.e. land dries, land-bridges open
• a special song brings back the day to conclude the Long Night

Contrast with this account:

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - Dorne: The Breaking

Or so the legend says.

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 [or in space for that matter...] 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.

• preceding Pact
• ice melting
• i.e. oceans rise, land wetter, land-bridges disappear 
• a special song causes the problem! (Note:  the 'song of the sea' = 'language of Leviathan'?  The 'rustling' of the leaves of the green see = the 'rumbling' of the waves of the green sea?)

This obviously directly contradicts the account given above.  So, either the 'Breaking' and the 'Long Night' are two separate events, or GRRM is fibbing about some things to drown us in obfuscation.  This is why I tend to follow the symbolic evidence -- archetypes don't lie -- whereas he is much more likely to succeed in pulling the wool over our eyes in his cagey 'historical' and 'logistical' accounts.

You can't have both the formation of land bridges and their abolition (e.g. breaking the Arm of Dorne) at the same time.  Ice Ages are usually associated with the opening-up of land bridges, allowing new 'waves' of human migration, as well as forests giving way to savannas -- which GRRM ironically describes as the 'sea' flooding the land, so to speak -- the 'Dothraki Sea' -- so in that highly poetic sense one might say 'sea levels' rose, but not otherwise from a geophysical perspective.

2.  Then you say the Long Night constituted a cultural and genetic bottleneck and that no previously-held major institutional power structures would have survived.  So how does the Night's Watch fit into this whole scheme?  

According to the account of the Long Night we've been given, the Last Hero approaches the Children in order to end the Long Night, with the presumed establishment of the Wall and the Night's Watch to guard it afterwards.  But then how does this work with your thesis of the Last Hero as an undead skinchanger zombie who was originally a member of the more ancient fraternity of the Night's Watch?  So my question is:  did the Night's Watch pre- or post-date the Long Night event; and when was the Wall built in relationship?

The following passage would seem to imply that a rudimentary body of the Night's Watch was in place, before the Last Hero approached the Children.  Alternatively, perhaps one might interpret the mention of 'the first men of the Night's Watch banding together' to suggest that the inception of the Night's Watch only took place during the Long Night, stimulated by the demands placed on humanity during this time, and moreover that their banding together was 'thanks to the Children', so maybe the Night's Watch was only really founded after the collaborative negotiations with the Children.  How about the Wall?

Quote

The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Long Night

Yet there are other tales—harder to credit and yet more central to the old histories—about creatures known as the Others. According to these tales, they came from the frozen Land of Always Winter, bringing the cold and darkness with them as they sought to extinguish all light and warmth. The tales go on to say they rode monstrous ice spiders and the horses of the dead, resurrected to serve them, just as they resurrected dead men to fight on their behalf.

How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night's Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north. Now, six thousand years later (or eight thousand as True History puts forward), the Wall made to defend the realms of men is still manned by the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch, and neither the Others nor the children have been seen in many centuries.

 

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You guys were on a roll there with you gowns of silver man milk...

Yeah it's amazing where a 'simple' anagram will lead one...  Now that you mention the 'silver gowns', that reminds me of the mistletoe berry symbolism -- particularly the associations with the male fertility deity conferred by the white berries whose sticky sap was thought to resemble semen -- that might be related to the weirwoods, with the druids who harvest the mistletoe as greenseer-analogs:

Quote

From wikipedia:

The ritual of oak and mistletoe is a Celtic religious ceremony, in which white-clad druids climbed a sacred oak, cut down the mistletoe growing on it, sacrificed two white bulls and used the mistletoe to make an elixir to cure infertility and the effects of poison.[1] The ritual, known from a single passage in Pliny's Natural History, has helped shape the image of the druid in the popular imagination.[2][3]

 

Account by Pliny the Elder[edit]

The only extant source for this ritual is a passage in the Natural History by Roman historian Pliny the Elder, written in the 1st century AD. Speaking of mistletoe, he writes:

“We should not omit to mention the great admiration that the Gauls have for it as well. The druids – that is what they call their magicians – hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and a tree on which it is growing, provided it is a hard-timbered oak [robur][4][5].... Mistletoe is rare and when found it is gathered with great ceremony, and particularly on the sixth day of the moon.... Hailing the moon in a native word that means 'healing all things,' they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls, whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest arrayed in white vestments climbs the tree and, with a golden sickle, cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to a god to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it. They believe that mistletoe given in drink will impart fertility to any animal that is barren and that it is an antidote to all poisons.[1]”

While Pliny does not indicate the source on which he based this account, Jean-Louis Brunaux has argued that it was likely Posidonius of Rhodes, a polymath who flourished in the 1st century BC.[6]

Later influence and historiography[edit]

Miranda Aldhouse-Green has argued that, although Pliny is the only authority to mention this ceremony, the main elements of his account are all features of Celtic religion that are confirmed elsewhere; these include oak trees, mistletoe, ritual banqueting, the moon, and bull-sacrifice.[7]

Pliny's account has been considered to have contributed largely to the popular depiction of druids today, as white-clad wise men performing sacrifices in the forests and equipped with golden sickles.[8] Chateaubriand incorporated a dramatized version of Pliny's scene in his Les Martyrs, in which the druidess Velleda plays a part.[3] In the Astérix comics, the druid Getafix is often depicted among oak trees, robed in white, and bearing a golden sickle.[3]

I also really enjoyed this article on Mistletoe: the evolution of a Christmas tradition -- why does this parasitic plant remind us of romance?,

which, among other fascinating details, includes mention of the importance of mistletoe in Norse mythology, e.g. the arrow of mistletoe (akin to Bloodraven's 'white arrow and black spell') that killed Baldur (there's also a bit on the mistle thrush's role in the cycle!)

[Unchained]

3 hours ago, LmL said:

Yeah, are you up to date on my essays? I think the evidence is quite overwhelming. I am as sure that the Hammer was a moon meteor as I am that moon meteors caused the Long Night. Obviously I could be entirely self deluded and wrong about everything, but barring that, yes, the evidence pointing to the hammer being a moon meteor is inescapable and overwhelming. 

While on the subject of being self deluded and entirely, completely wrong, have you had a chance to read my interpretation of what the fiery dancers and sorcerers may be?   

 

That crackpot theory at the end actually seems to be going somewhere to me.  I think that whole scene may be showing us the "right" way to forge a lightbringer that isn't all dark and bloody underneath the actual blood sacrifices that birth a black dragon. It involves a sort of synergy between dragons and weirwood magic.  

[LmL]

5 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

That's very kind of you to say-- sometimes my banter is not so much witty but so absurd I even find myself perplexed!  

Your timeline makes sense from a symbolic perspective, except I suspect you will get lots of pushback from various detractors (less 'adoring', less symbolically-inclined, and therefore less enthusiastic than myself) since it conflicts with a lot of the 'facts' GRRM has inserted into his 'canon' in order to deliberately confuse us -- as evidenced by lack of consensus on the recent 'Heretic' timeline thread (could you make head or tail of any of that discussion?)  

Haven't looked at it actually. But I don't think my proposal contradicts anything solid. 

Quote

Just two questions:

1.  The Hammer of the Waters resulted in inundation of the land and sea levels rising, right?  Then how come in this account of the Long Night, brought to my attention by @LynnS when we were discussing her upcoming essay on the Wall, the sea levels fell in conjunction with the water becoming locked up in ice, as is consistent with an ice age?  

You are reading too much into the text here i think. It says the river froze, not that sea levels rose. The river dried up down stream because it froze upstream. You're right about a typical Ice Age but there is no specific evidence of the sea levels lowering during the LN.

Quote

• following Pact
• rivers frozen
• i.e. land dries, land-bridges open
• a special song brings back the day to conclude the Long Night

Again, no, the land bridges was said to already be open before the LAST, and supposedly closed again by the Hammer, all before the LN. Nour opening of land bridges is recorded at the time of the LN. Again, in the real world, that makes sense and maybe that happened, but there is no record of it.

Quote

Contrast with this account:

• preceding Pact
• ice melting
• i.e. oceans rise, land wetter, land-bridges disappear 
• a special song causes the problem! (Note:  the 'song of the sea' = 'language of Leviathan'?  The 'rustling' of the leaves of the green see = the 'rumbling' of the waves of the green sea?)

This obviously directly contradicts the account given above.  So, either the 'Breaking' and the 'Long Night' are two separate events, or GRRM is fibbing about some things to drown us in obfuscation.  This is why I tend to follow the symbolic evidence -- archetypes don't lie -- whereas he is much more likely to succeed in pulling the wool over our eyes in his cagey 'historical' and 'logistical' accounts.

You can't have both the formation of land bridges and their abolition (e.g. breaking the Arm of Dorne) at the same time.  Ice Ages are usually associated with the opening-up of land bridges, allowing new 'waves' of human migration, as well as forests giving way to savannas -- which GRRM ironically describes as the 'sea' flooding the land, so to speak -- the 'Dothraki Sea' -- so in that highly poetic sense one might say 'sea levels' rose, but not otherwise from a geophysical perspective.

I don't think sea level rise has anything to do with anything, quite frankly. I'm simply suggesting that the long night was caused by the meteor impacts, and this was the cause of the destruction of the land bridges. That's it. 

Quote

2.  Then you say the Long Night constituted a cultural and genetic bottleneck and that no previously-held major institutional power structures would have survived.  So how does the Night's Watch fit into this whole scheme?  

According to the account of the Long Night we've been given, the Last Hero approaches the Children in order to end the Long Night, with the presumed establishment of the Wall and the Night's Watch to guard it afterwards.  But then how does this work with your thesis of the Last Hero as an undead skinchanger zombie who was originally a member of the more ancient fraternity of the Night's Watch?  So my question is:  did the Night's Watch pre- or post-date the Long Night event; and when was the Wall built in relationship?

I actually wasn't meaning to imply that the Nights Watch existed before the long night. I tend to think the conventional wisdom that the Nights Watch was formed during the long night is correct, and therefore they are probably the oldest institution in Westeros.

Quote

The following passage would seem to imply that a rudimentary body of the Night's Watch was in place, before the Last Hero approached the Children.  Alternatively, perhaps one might interpret the mention of 'the first men of the Night's Watch banding together' to suggest that the inception of the Night's Watch only took place during the Long Night, stimulated by the demands placed on humanity during this time, and moreover that their banding together was 'thanks to the Children', so maybe the Night's Watch was only really founded after the collaborative negotiations with the Children.  How about the Wall?

Exactly, the children of the forest seem to have helped form the first two nights watch during the long night. As for building the wall, I really don't have a solid guess about that. I don't know why it was built or by whom or when.

 

[Isobel Harper]

I found this scene interesting, mostly with regard to Swyft and his house.

 The remnants of her small council followed her out. Harys Swyft appeared dazed. He stumbled at the door and might have fallen if Aurane Waters had not caught him by the arm. Even Orton Merryweather seemed anxious. "The smallfolk are fond of the little queen," he said. "They will not take well to this. I fear what might happen next, Your Grace."

House Swyft's sigil is a blue bantam rooster on yellow and their words are "Awake! Awake!"  Roosters stereotypically crow at dawn and wake everyone.  (Although, I live next to some chickens, and apparently they just crow all the time.  Heh.)  

House Swyft's sigil and words allude to dawn.  Harys Swyft (dawn) is sick and dying (a dying sun?).  He almost falls, but Aurane Waters catches his arm.  Aurane Waters prevents the dawn/sun from setting.  (Or prevents the LN?)

I researched the bantam rooster and discovered that "bantam" is both a specific breed of chicken as well as a size of chicken.  Some breeds have a "bantam" version of that breed, which are smaller versions of the standard size.  A synonym for bantam would be pygmy, miniature, or dwarf.  Hmm.

I'm not sure if this scene hints to something Waters will do in the future or if alludes to something bigger.  I thought I'd share it with fellow mythical astronomist, who will probably be able to analyze it better than me. 

 

[LmL]

5 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Can you give me an abridged argument, or is it necessary to read through everything you've written? (You could just state some assumptions and let me follow up on those if necessary.) 

Ok, well, an abridged version... oh man. This will be easier if you tell me which essays of mine you have read / listened to, so I know how much I need to explain. Very broadly speaking, there are several different lines of examination which lead to this conclusions.

One is the extensive correlation between the primary meteor symbols: dragons, flaming swords, poisonous or bloody spears, hammers, lightning bolts, sea dragons, and drowning moon symbols.  The dragons fall like thunderbolts and make sounds like thunderclaps, the sun beats down like a fiery hammer, Thor's hammer throws lighting and in ASOIAF lightning and hammers are often connected to Thor characters, etc.  So that's one line of symbolism.

Then we have a ton of people who suffer arm and neck wounds (Arm of Dorne & Neck of Westeros) during the middle of a Lightbringer forging metaphor scene. Just a ton of those, with really fantastic symbolism surrounding them (such as Tyrion getting hit in the arm by a northman with a Morningstar).

Third line of symbolism, the clues around Dorne.  The city next to the broken arm is called sunspear - and that's a great description of a meteor which drank the fire of the sun, a sun-spear. Oberyn's oily black spear is in turn used as a fantatsic black meteor symbol all throughout the fight with the Mountain. One of the islands in the Stepstones is named Bloodstone, because the black moon meteors can be thought of as bloodstones - bleeding stars summoned by the Bloodstone Emperor, plus a bunch of specific correlations to the supposed mystical and magical properties of bloodstone.  Daemon Targaryen, he of the red dragon Caraxes the Bloodwyrm, sets himself up as a king of the Narrow Sea and takes Bloodstone for his seat... and Daemon and his red dragon are used for some terrific Lightbringer / AA symbolism in TPATQ, such as when he went dragon on dragon into the God's Eye. There is also a Grey Gallows Stepstone Island, that being an allusion to Yggdrasil as a gallows tree.  Then we have things happen like King Robert's Hammer and Lionstar being sent to Sunspear with a moon maiden, Myrcella. Robert's Hammer gives the Thor's hammer associations with the hammer of the waters, as well as the idea of horned lords dropping the hammer, and a lion star falling on Dorne is again a terrific analogy for a falling star which drank the fire of the sun, as the moon dragon did. Darkstar does symbolic stuff in Dorne, as do other characters... you get the idea. Dorne is also the location for a great chapter full of Hammer of the Waters clues (the Queenmaker) which has that "the sun was beating down like a fiery hammer" quote.

Perhaps the best lines of examination has to do with the overlapping of moon breaking and hammer-summoning. For example, you know that my main theory involves AA breaking the moon, right? Well, we also weirwoods trying to pull down the moon or scratch at the face of the moon, shutting out the moon, etc. There are more clues about greenseers bringing down the moon to of course, and the only way AA and the greenseers could both have brought down the moon were if AA was a greenseer, which is of course something I have attempted to prove via several different lines of symbolism as well. But setting aside AA, if the greenseers had something to do with bringing down the moon meteors... well then it immediately becomes obvious that this is probably the way they "dropped the hammer."  And in turn, I find greenseers tied to hammer symbolism as well as bringing down the moon symbolism. 

So, that is a very quick, ad-hoc attempt to summarize the ways in which I have been led up to this conclusion, but please understand that the sum total of the evidence is far more than can even be contained in one of my giant essays. I have been laying out the evidence for this for several episodes now, but I would say the place to start if you want to see the arguments and analysis I am alluding to here, start with The Mountain vs. The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters, and after that, you might try The Grey King and the Sea Dragon. BTW you can listen to these bad boys on podcast if you want, knock it out while doing chores or driving or whatever. Audio quality is high, humor is low brow, ha ha. 

[Lost Melnibonean]

14 minutes ago, LmL said:

Ok, well, an abridged version... oh man. This will be easier if you tell me which essays of mine you have read / listened to, so I know how much I need to explain. Very broadly speaking, there are several different lines of examination which lead to this conclusions.

One is the extensive correlation between the primary meteor symbols: dragons, flaming swords, poisonous or bloody spears, hammers, lightning bolts, sea dragons, and drowning moon symbols.  The dragons fall like thunderbolts and make sounds like thunderclaps, the sun beats down like a fiery hammer, Thor's hammer throws lighting and in ASOIAF lightning and hammers are often connected to Thor characters, etc.  So that's one line of symbolism.

Then we have a ton of people who suffer arm and neck wounds (Arm of Dorne & Neck of Westeros) during the middle of a Lightbringer forging metaphor scene. Just a ton of those, with really fantastic symbolism surrounding them (such as Tyrion getting hit in the arm by a northman with a Morningstar).

Third line of symbolism, the clues around Dorne.  The city next to the broken arm is called sunspear - and that's a great description of a meteor which drank the fire of the sun, a sun-spear. Oberyn's oily black spear is in turn used as a fantatsic black meteor symbol all throughout the fight with the Mountain. One of the islands in the Stepstones is named Bloodstone, because the black moon meteors can be thought of as bloodstones - bleeding stars summoned by the Bloodstone Emperor, plus a bunch of specific correlations to the supposed mystical and magical properties of bloodstone.  Daemon Targaryen, he of the red dragon Caraxes the Bloodwyrm, sets himself up as a king of the Narrow Sea and takes Bloodstone for his seat... and Daemon and his red dragon are used for some terrific Lightbringer / AA symbolism in TPATQ, such as when he went dragon on dragon into the God's Eye. There is also a Grey Gallows Stepstone Island, that being an allusion to Yggdrasil as a gallows tree.  Then we have things happen like King Robert's Hammer and Lionstar being sent to Sunspear with a moon maiden, Myrcella. Robert's Hammer gives the Thor's hammer associations with the hammer of the waters, as well as the idea of horned lords dropping the hammer, and a lion star falling on Dorne is again a terrific analogy for a falling star which drank the fire of the sun, as the moon dragon did. Darkstar does symbolic stuff in Dorne, as do other characters... you get the idea. Dorne is also the location for a great chapter full of Hammer of the Waters clues (the Queenmaker) which has that "the sun was beating down like a fiery hammer" quote.

Perhaps the best lines of examination has to do with the overlapping of moon breaking and hammer-summoning. For example, you know that my main theory involves AA breaking the moon, right? Well, we also weirwoods trying to pull down the moon or scratch at the face of the moon, shutting out the moon, etc. There are more clues about greenseers bringing down the moon to of course, and the only way AA and the greenseers could both have brought down the moon were if AA was a greenseer, which is of course something I have attempted to prove via several different lines of symbolism as well. But setting aside AA, if the greenseers had something to do with bringing down the moon meteors... well then it immediately becomes obvious that this is probably the way they "dropped the hammer."  And in turn, I find greenseers tied to hammer symbolism as well as bringing down the moon symbolism. 

So, that is a very quick, ad-hoc attempt to summarize the ways in which I have been led up to this conclusion, but please understand that the sum total of the evidence is far more than can even be contained in one of my giant essays. I have been laying out the evidence for this for several episodes now, but I would say the place to start if you want to see the arguments and analysis I am alluding to here, start with The Mountain vs. The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters, and after that, you might try The Grey King and the Sea Dragon. BTW you can listen to these bad boys on podcast if you want, knock it out while doing chores or driving or whatever. Audio quality is high, humor is low brow, ha ha. 

Thank you. That's very thoughtful analysis. I appreciate the very executive summary.