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Mirri Maz Duur and Bronze Yohn Royce


KingMance

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Currently doing a reread of AGOT, and I'm on the Daenerys chapter where the maegi uses blood magic on Drogo. When she calls for his horse to be be brought to his bath to have its throat slit, we encounter this passage:

...floated like one already dead, pus and blood seeping from his wound to stain the bathwaters. Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs.

We learn earlier on about "bronze" Yohn Royce and his ancestrual suit of armor, described very similarly to this knife. I never caught the connection before, and honestly have no idea what to make of it. Any theories already out there on this? I know many of you are good at this sort of thing, @Seams comes to mind in particular. I'm also pretty sure the Royces words are "we remember" or something close, and could have some connection. :dunno: 

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@rotting sea cow just caught the glyph / rune similarity between the Mirri Maz Duur knife and the dagger in front of Widow of the Waterfront.

There was some discussion of runes in a thread last month about the Royces.

In a nutshell, I suspect that runes are a form of words, and there is a pun involving words / sword that leads me to think that runes are a form of weapon. But maybe you'll think of something deeper or come up with a fresh perspective.

I still want to understand the silver sword, bright with runes that Ser Ilyn hands to Joffrey moments before he starts choking at the wedding feast.

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Metals of all kinds were believed to hold magic powers, and the older the metal the more powerful the magic. So in an age of steel, a bronze object with runes would appear to be very magical, especially if it was an old one.

In aSoIaF, of course, there is every possibility that the magic is real.

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Jon finds leaf-shaped spearheads at the Fist of the First Men. Arya sees them at the House of Black and White. Maybe "leaf-shaped" is a hint that these come from Leaf, the CotF? Leaf is the only one who speaks the Common Tongue, and wandered the kingdoms until fairly recently.

Red bronze is a thing in rl, but this is the only reference I see in the entire series, perhaps indicating that the bronze has been altered? Maybe for blood magic?

ACOK Jon IV

A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .

 

AFFC Arya II

When she was not working, Arya was free to wander as she would amongst the vaults and storerooms, so long as she did not leave the temple, nor descend to the third cellar. She found a room full of weapons and armor: ornate helms and curious old breastplates, longswords, daggers, and dirks, crossbows and tall spears with leaf-shaped heads. Another vault was crammed with clothing, thick furs and splendid silks in half a hundred colors, next to piles of foul-smelling rags and threadbare roughspuns. There must be treasure chambers too, Arya decided. She pictured stacks of golden plates, bags of silver coins, sapphires blue as the sea, ropes of fat green pearls.

Edit: the rest of Jon's statement refers to the CotF and how the bundle was recently placed:

Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .

Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an auroch's horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall, and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black.

 

 

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She's most likely just using a very old relic to conduit her magic. I don't know if the runes are anything special, though. 

The word "rune" in and of itself is a bit vague in-text, and can mean many things. For example, Yezzan's golden slave collars are covered in Valyrian "runes" according to Tyrion. But there's nothing special or magical about these runes, they just name the slave owner.  

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Thanks for the responses. The runes part is pretty odd to me. It seems more than likely that some sort of magic is involved with the maegi, but Royce stumps me. IIRC from TWOIAF, countless Royces have died while wearing said suit, so obviously the runes don't work unless something else takes place. 

Nice catch regarding Leaf @Lollygag. She popped into my mind while reading, but wasn't sure how or if it fit.

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About runes, I don’t have a good feel for how they’ll be used in-story but I have a certain reaction to them. The text and GRRM in interviews mentions several times that ancient history is often inaccurate. The stories are oral (Old Nan) or they were written a loooonnnggg time after they occurred. Even recent history can be questioned: people have agendas and the winner writes the history. Runes are unreadable to the characters. So whenever I see runes in story, I wonder if something old was forgotten—something which shouldn’t have been forgotten. So maybe the Royces remember, but because their armor doesn’t protect them, perhaps they don’t remember correctly any longer.

 

I’m going to expand on my whackadoodle idea in the above post to try it on for size here. So if the Others/CotF/Starks/FM all use a type of water magic (transformation/skinchanging), then we might have an explanation of why Dany sees a dancing wolf. In-story, Mirri is said to use bloodmagic, but bloodmagic and fire magic are connected elsewhere in the story. Mirri says fire has great healing powers, which seems to connect it to blood. If the blade is really a spear-head, then the handle isn’t original.  The red (blood?) bronze handle with glyphs + the CotF blade may indicate that the knife is both ice and fire.

AGOT Bran IV: They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.

Mel is also all about fire and blood when it comes to her magic.

Before Mirri begins the ceremony, she has Drago put into a bath, and then blood is added. So water and blood (fire) are mixed. Then Dany sees: the shadow of a great wolf (dire wolf?), and another like a man wreathed in flames.

Mirri: "Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them."

 

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Prince Tommen uses a leaf-shaped blade in his play joust at Joffrey's name day tournament. He is unhorsed by the straw man (jousting dummy).

I think the leaf-shaped blades might be a reference to Bran, not necessarily to Leaf of the CotF, although the two are obviously linked. Bran and Tommen had a mock joust at Winterfell before Bran's fall. And we know that Bran communicates as a greenseer through the whispers of leaves. I don't know if this would extend to Dany's arc, or whether there are other characters who might "communicate" through leaf-shaped blades.

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6 hours ago, Lollygag said:

 Runes are unreadable to the characters. So whenever I see runes in story, I wonder if something old was forgotten—something which shouldn’t have been forgotten. So maybe the Royces remember, but because their armor doesn’t protect them, perhaps they don’t remember correctly any longer.

 

I’m going to expand on my whackadoodle idea in the above post to try it on for size here. So if the Others/CotF/Starks/FM all use a type of water magic (transformation/skinchanging), then we might have an explanation of why Dany sees a dancing wolf. In-story, Mirri is said to use bloodmagic, but bloodmagic and fire magic are connected elsewhere in the story. Mirri says fire has great healing powers, which seems to connect it to blood. If the blade is really a spear-head, then the handle isn’t original.  The red (blood?) bronze handle with glyphs + the CotF blade may indicate that the knife is both ice and fire.

AGOT Bran IV: They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.

Mel is also all about fire and blood when it comes to her magic.

Before Mirri begins the ceremony, she has Drago put into a bath, and then blood is added. So water and blood (fire) are mixed. Then Dany sees: the shadow of a great wolf (dire wolf?), and another like a man wreathed in flames.

 

 

"We don't remember" - the Royces, probably.

I thought of Jon when the wolf/flames text came up. Bloodraven/Bran works as well. 

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10 hours ago, Renly's Banana said:

She's most likely just using a very old relic to conduit her magic. I don't know if the runes are anything special, though. 

The word "rune" in and of itself is a bit vague in-text, and can mean many things. For example, Yezzan's golden slave collars are covered in Valyrian "runes" according to Tyrion. But there's nothing special or magical about these runes, they just name the slave owner.  

Could be this.  It's an ancient weapon created by a primitive people who could not work iron into steel.  Bronze is softer and much easier to work with than iron.  If I remember my history correctly, the bronze age came before the iron age.  Iron beats steal in terms of weaponry, however.  

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1 hour ago, KingMance said:

"We don't remember" - the Royces, probably.

I thought of Jon when the wolf/flames text came up. Bloodraven/Bran works as well. 

The Royces might be pretty close, though. maybe closer than anyone else. One has to wonder how much the Vale Wildlings remember since the Northern Wildlings remember much more than the Northerners. Timett son of Timett is a sharp guy and I've been really wondering about that single eye of his.

I thought of various Starks when the wolf came up, and maybe there's some symbolism there pertaining to a character. If so, the flaming man would be someone in-story, as well. Problem is, Dany actually saw them and Mirri said the dead would dance and that they were powers dark and old, so they're definitely something more than just character symbolism.

I only did a brief check but at this point, it looks like runes probably relate to First Men, and glyphs are used exclusively for Valyrian stuff, with the one exception of the quote below. So if this pattern is accurate, the handle might be Valyrian.

ASOS Danaerys II: Kraznys stopped in front of a Ghiscari who might have been his taller fitter brother, and flicked his lash at a small bronze disk on the swordbelt at his feet. "There is his name. Ask the whore of Westeros whether she can read Ghiscari glyphs." When Dany admitted that she could not, the slaver turned to the Unsullied. "What is your name?" he demanded.

I looked up @Renly's Bananacollar reference above. It's made of iron and tied to Valyrian things, so iron seems tied to fire in the story. The Others hate iron, the Starks must be buried with iron swords, and that weird meat locker at the Wall which Jon says is colder than it should be and preserved meat longer than regular freezing has an iron door and all of the hooks are iron. 

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