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Pounding the Planet: Meteoric Thaumogenesis as Fertilization


hiemal

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14 minutes ago, LmL said:

I like the idea too... but how does that work? There wasn't a meteorite under every tree. In this scenario, it has to be one nasty poison meteor sitting somewhere like in the heart of winter or on the Gods Eye, and it's infecting the whole continent and causing weirs to grow. Do you have any ideas about how this happens? Trees from meteors, in any sensible sense?

Nah, it just hit me in an intuitive flash while listening to one of your podcasts. We have black oily stones and a purported  pale stone. We also have pale trees and black trees, both of which produce a psychoactive substance, which enhances extrasensory powers. I would assume they spread through the root system, or their own seed pods. I'm just spit balling here. I'm not married to the idea.

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Micorrhyzae are fungi that live symbiotically with trees, and the actual root-network that inspired Avatar utilizes a system of them to transmit nutrients and information to one another. Basically in real life, these soil fungi are the fibre-optic cable that make up the network. 

Interesting factoid. 

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33 minutes ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Micorrhyzae are fungi that live symbiotically with trees, and the actual root-network that inspired Avatar utilizes a system of them to transmit nutrients and information to one another. Basically in real life, these soil fungi are the fibre-optic cable that make up the network. 

Interesting factoid. 

There is actually a really good Radio Lab episode on this concept. I think the episode was called From Tree to Shining Tree.

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1 hour ago, Durran Durrandon said:

@hiemal for the sake of being complete we should provably the God-Emperor on earth,son of the Lion of Night and the Maiden Made of Light, descended from three heavens to found the Golden Empire of the Dawn, because it kind of has an alien vibe.

I'm increasingly becoming a fan of the trees being seeded as well.

It absolutely does. I actually have a tinfoil on that and thought I had actually at least mentioned it in the OP but I must have deleted it or been thinking of a different thread.

Anyways, it's a variant of the idea that humans are invaders but with humans as natives and a faerie-like invader like the interstellar Sithi in Tad Williams influential Memory, Sorrow, Thorn as colonists.

 

 

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2 hours ago, LmL said:

I like the idea too... but how does that work? There wasn't a meteorite under every tree. In this scenario, it has to be one nasty poison meteor sitting somewhere like in the heart of winter or on the Gods Eye, and it's infecting the whole continent and causing weirs to grow. Do you have any ideas about how this happens? Trees from meteors, in any sensible sense?

I'm thinking all you would need is really thick hulls on your seeds that would burn away on reentry like some seeds rely on wildfires or the stomach acids of animals, at least one successful landing, and time.

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1 hour ago, Durran Durrandon said:

l love rereading my comments and seeing how auto-correct has mangled my writing.

One of my favorite pasttimes!

 

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36 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I'm thinking all you would need is really thick hulls on your seeds that would burn away on reentry like some seeds rely on wildfires or the stomach acids of animals, at least one successful landing, and time.

Oh my gosh you are thinking so literally about this! :) I think it's going to be a little more magical. The meteors as seeds is more of a metaphor for the magical action, I would think. 

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7 hours ago, LmL said:

Oh my gosh you are thinking so literally about this! :) I think it's going to be a little more magical. The meteors as seeds is more of a metaphor for the magical action, I would think. 

One of my banes and a reason I always like to hear the input of others. I often fall into the trap of seeing either just the forest or just the trees, if I might continue the flora theme and I often fall back on Clarke's Law about sufficiently advanced technology as magic.

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A further (probably over-literal) thought on Weirwoods as the possible "magical seed" (and they are prime contenders with their soul cycle and my suspicion that the Deep Ones are corruptors):

If I remember my Botony 101 (and I probably don't) most trees have a haploid and a diploid reproductive stage; seeds and spores- with the spore stage taking place on a very small scale distributed in the soil. It's not quite "mushroom" clouds but if the the bombardment took time and some had were in later stages while others were still falling that could be an effective means of distribution.

And a quick question: How do you see the relationship between the weirwoods and the CotF? I'm tinfoiling that the CotF are a servitor species adapted from a local species through the influence of the Soul Cycle.

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12 hours ago, LmL said:

idea that I totally got all on my own without any help from @ravenous reader at all (heh heh heh)

Really now, so you still have those ideas, do you..?  ;)

No further comma...

No comet...

Damn autocorrect!  :P

8 hours ago, LmL said:

Oh my gosh you are thinking so literally about this! :) I think it's going to be a little more magical. The meteors as seeds is more of a metaphor for the magical action, I would think. 

Oh, do you think you can tell the difference between the literal and the metaphorical, the myth and the material..?

So, Lucifer, you think you can tell...

Quote

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell

Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?

...

:)

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37 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Really now, so you still have those ideas, do you..?  ;)

No further comma...

No comet...

Damn autocorrect!  :P

Oh, do you think you can tell the difference between the literal and the metaphorical, the myth and the material..?

So, Lucifer, you think you can tell...

:)

Lucifer Sam, siam cat
Always sitting by your side
Always by your side
That cat's something I can't explain
Ginger, ginger, Jennifer Gentle you're a witch
You're the left side
He's the right side
Oh, no
That cat's something I can't explain
Lucifer go to sea
Be a hip cat, be a ship's cat
Somewhere, anywhere
That cat's something I can't explain
At night prowling sifting sand
Hiding around on the ground
He'll be found when you're around
That cat's something I can't explain

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13 minutes ago, LmL said:

Lucifer Sam, siam cat
Always sitting by your side
Always by your side
That cat's something I can't explain
Ginger, ginger, Jennifer Gentle you're a witch
You're the left side
He's the right side
Oh, no
That cat's something I can't explain
Lucifer go to sea
Be a hip cat, be a ship's cat
Somewhere, anywhere
That cat's something I can't explain
At night prowling sifting sand
Hiding around on the ground
He'll be found when you're around
That cat's something I can't explain

Sometimes I wish I didn't understand you so well...

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3 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Sometimes I wish I didn't understand you so well...

Oh, do you think you can tell the difference between Siam cat and Lion of Night? They are both Lucifer. We are one.

And now back to the thread...

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Spitballing on weirwoods as magical invaders:
Could the weirnet's non-linear "conscious" relationship with time be in some way responsible for the many anachronisms biological (mammoths and dinosaurs) and perhaps even cultural (stone, bronze, iron, and steel cultures all sharing space and time) and other chronological oddities like prophecy?

To what extant are the CotF literally the Forest's children? Do they reproduce on their own or could be they be grown like strange but breathing fruit (hangings in reverse)? Could Weirwoods grow other things, like mammoths or dinosaurs? Long shot, since I have a hard time believing the weirnet could extend back that far...

Do the Weirwoods reproduce like other plants? As potentially immortal and at least in some way intelligent I wonder how they manage that aspect of their biology.

To what extant has Oily Black Stone interacted with and corrupted portions of the weirnet?

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17 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

Spitballing, the only place we have been told a pale star has fallen is Starfall. The Pale Stone Tower is actually a petrified weirwood tree, the original weirwood tree.

Nice!

Spitballing with the pale star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning, constellation we also know where there they came from pre-landing.

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5 hours ago, hiemal said:

Nice!

Spitballing with the pale star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning, constellation we also know where there they came from pre-landing.

There's a myth you may know that seems ASoIaF related.  A woman named Amethyste was being pursued by a lustful Dionysus.  In order to stay chaste she prayed to the gods to protect her.  The goddess Diana answered and turned her into a white stone.  Dionysus felt guilty and poured wine or cried tears of wine over the stone which is sometimes a statue turning them into purple amethysts.  Dionysus references are plenty in the books, and anything about a woman turning into white stone then an amethyst has my attention.  I am not sure how or if it fits yet.  The Nights King chased his bride.  Maybe the moon was trying to escape the drunken sun fertility god king and ran to earth in the form of a white meteorite.  The amethyst emperess is a descendant of the god on earth that came from the sky then returned.  

 

I need to to look at moon maidens who pray to get away from men some more.  

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1 hour ago, Unchained said:

There's a myth you may know that seems ASoIaF related.  A woman named Amethyste was being pursued by a lustful Dionysus.  In order to stay chaste she prayed to the gods to protect her.  The goddess Diana answered and turned her into a white stone.  Dionysus felt guilty and poured wine or cried tears of wine over the stone which is sometimes a statue turning them into purple amethysts.  Dionysus references are plenty in the books, and anything about a woman turning into white stone then an amethyst has my attention.  I am not sure how or if it fits yet.  The Nights King chased his bride.  Maybe the moon was trying to escape the drunken sun fertility god king and ran to earth in the form of a white meteorite.  The amethyst emperess is a descendant of the god on earth that came from the sky then returned.  

 

I need to to look at moon maidens who pray to get away from men some more.  

And how that relates to the founding of Braavos! Excellent...

A white stone, associated with a moon maid and the black stone of the Bloodstone emperor associated with Cybele, an earth mother.

And not for nothing, but I think there will be a tower or stone of ice in the Land of Always Winter.

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