Heresy 201 and onward we go...

[Black Crow]

On ‎26‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 6:14 PM, JNR said:

Source interview.

He also cites Varys, but from his hesitation about both, it's clear that this isn't something he's given a lot of thought to, probably because he hasn't even read the fan sites since the nineties (or so he claims...) and thus, isn't really in a position to know what the fans think en masse.  

Whatever information about fan beliefs filters through to him via Parris or conventions is a tiny subset of the whole.

Though I also suspect his recent post about the Book of Revelation/Valyria reflects his understanding of fan beliefs on a particular subject.

Yeess... its hardly a profound, carefully considered comment.

I think I'll stick by my assessment above. The popular view of our Mel is that her greatest talent is for getting things wrong and for burning the opposition on the flimsiest of excuses. I think that this apparent ineptitude masks how dangerous she really is.

[LynnS]

33 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Yeess... its hardly a profound, carefully considered comment.

I think I'll stick by my assessment above. The popular view of our Mel is that her greatest talent is for getting things wrong and for burning the opposition on the flimsiest of excuses. I think that this apparent ineptitude masks how dangerous she really is.

Yup, it doesn't seem to be something he has given much thought.  If anyone brings down the wards, I think it's likely to be Mel in that inept overconfident manner she exhibits.  LOL

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

Yup, it doesn't seem to be something he has given much thought.  If anyone brings down the wards, I think it's likely to be Mel in that inept overconfident manner she exhibits.  LOL

I wouldn't necessarily say inept or even overconfident; rather I'd say utterly single-minded and damning the torpedoes

[Brad Stark]

A little off topic, but just got a new idea about BR and the 3 eyed crow.  We've speculated before that the 3EC might not be BR, or there might be 2 3EC's, since his behavior is somewhat different between different dreams.  Also BR's response when asked if he is the 3EC suggests he might not be.

I suspect Bran himself (his future self) is the 3EC, not BR.  He is altering the past to convince himself to go North, to provide help, and possibly even to cause his own fall from the tower, without which he never would go North of the Wall.

[LynnS]

19 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

A little off topic, but just got a new idea about BR and the 3 eyed crow.  We've speculated before that the 3EC might not be BR, or there might be 2 3EC's, since his behavior is somewhat different between different dreams.  Also BR's response when asked if he is the 3EC suggests he might not be.

I suspect Bran himself (his future self) is the 3EC, not BR.  He is altering the past to convince himself to go North, to provide help, and possibly even to cause his own fall from the tower, without which he never would go North of the Wall.

I can well imagine Bloodraven or Bran as the three-eyed raven rather than a three eyed crow.  Ravens are noble born men, while crows are low born men, criminals and bastards. 

[Black Crow]

except that there is no three-eyed raven in the book... just we black crows 

 

[Matthew.]

On 8/28/2017 at 4:43 PM, Brad Stark said:

A little off topic, but just got a new idea about BR and the 3 eyed crow.  We've speculated before that the 3EC might not be BR, or there might be 2 3EC's, since his behavior is somewhat different between different dreams.  Also BR's response when asked if he is the 3EC suggests he might not be.

I suspect Bran himself (his future self) is the 3EC, not BR.  He is altering the past to convince himself to go North, to provide help, and possibly even to cause his own fall from the tower, without which he never would go North of the Wall.

My read on the 3EC/BR ambiguity is that the 3EC is a collective consciousness composed of all of the greenseers--in that light, Bloodraven would be a part of the 3EC, but not the 3EC. And, in time, Bran will become a part of the 3EC.

That said, what you propose does put me in mind of both the longstanding "Bran is all the Brans" theory that a lot of people believe, as well as this oft-analyzed exchange with Coldhands:
 

Quote

Meera's gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. "Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?"

"A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer." The longhall's wooden door banged open. Outside, the night wind howled, bleak and black. The trees were full of ravens, screaming. Coldhands did not move.

"A monster," Bran said.

The ranger looked at Bran as if the rest of them did not exist. "Your monster, Brandon Stark."

Both the title of "last greenseer," as well as the "your monster" lines are potentially interesting, if we run with the theory you propose--Bran is the Last Greenseer, the 3EC, bleeding backward through the weirwood and intervening through whomever is currently hooked up to the trees.

Though, personally, I'd really prefer that GRRM not go down the road of Bran being able to alter or interact with the past.

[Black Crow]

6 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Though, personally, I'd really prefer that GRRM not go down the road of Bran being able to alter or interact with the past.

I agree, and looking as always for the simple explanation I've always tended to read the line about "your monster" in the light of FDR's well-known remark that "[President Somoza] might be a bastard but he's our bastard "

[LynnS]

Revisiting the Knight of the Laughing Tree and this bit of text:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard XV

Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar Targaryen. The crown prince wore the armor he would die in: gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of his House wrought in rubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.

Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion's crown. Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.

The champion's crown is the laurel of roses.  So why does Ned reach out to claim it in his dream? I'm beginning to think that Ned was the mystery knight with Howland's help and this is why Meera and Jojen are so incredulous that Ned has never told the story. Keeping in mind that he fell in love with Ashara Dayne at the tourney and later squashes any story about her.   Perhaps Lyanna also knows of this bit of subterfuge, later discovered or suspected by Rhaegar who is given the task of unmasking the interloper by Aerys in his fury. He then drops the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap; placing the 'blame'.  That's when all the smiles died. 

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.

This sounds much like the iron throne or King Aerys:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard XI

Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed.

Or Tywin's army:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Tyrion VIII

In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.

A chair that could kill a man:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard XV

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. "Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together …"

I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill you.

Robert was one of those who vowed to unmask the Mystery Knight and since Robert never brings it up with Ned; Ned hid the truth of the incident from Robert as well.  Ned and Lyanna are responsible for what follows, unwary of the traps. 

The answer to Tyrion's question:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Tyrion VI

"For the realm! Once Rhaegar died, the war was done. Aerys was mad, Viserys too young, Prince Aegon a babe at the breast, but the realm needed a king . . . I prayed it should be your good father, but Robert was too strong, and Lord Stark moved too swiftly . . ."

"How many have you betrayed, I wonder? Aerys, Eddard Stark, me . . . King Robert as well? Lord Arryn, Prince Rhaegar? Where does it begin, Pycelle?" He knew where it ended

 

 

[JNR]

15 hours ago, Matthew. said:

I'd really prefer that GRRM not go down the road of Bran being able to alter or interact with the past.

Well, it would completely destroy the story.  

For instance, as his last chapter in ADWD all but demonstrates, Bran would never be able to resist warning Ned of his fate, should he go south and become Hand.   Bran wants his father back just as much as the other Stark kids.  I also doubt very much he'd be able to resist warning himself not to climb the First Keep on a certain day.

So for me it's obvious that GRRM is treating weirwood memories solely as memories, and Bloodraven was right in saying the past cannot be changed and communication with those in it is not possible.

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

this is why Meera and Jojen are so incredulous that Ned has never told the story.

Actually, only Jojen was incredulous.  Meera's idea is that the Knight was Howland.

[The Fattest Leech]

31 minutes ago, JNR said:

Well, it would completely destroy the story.  

For instance, as his last chapter in ADWD all but demonstrates, Bran would never be able to resist warning Ned of his fate, should he go south and become Hand.   Bran wants his father back just as much as the other Stark kids.  I also doubt very much he'd be able to resist warning himself not to climb the First Keep on a certain day.

So for me it's obvious that GRRM is treating weirwood memories solely as memories, and Bloodraven was right in saying the past cannot be changed and communication with those in it is not possible.

This falls in line with the theme of GRRM's old story For a Single Yesterday, one of his three time travel stories, but one that is not like the others. I won't spoil too much in case anyone wants to read it, but basically there is a catastrophic event that that turns everyone's world upside down. The main protagonist tries to assist a secondary character who is struggling with the new reality and delves into a special drug that lets him go view the past. The idea is you can go to the past (mentally/psionically), you can replay some events that seem very real, but those interactions never change the future, the "now" in the story. It is also a way for the characters in the current timeline to learn from the past to better their future. And all of this happens near water and under a tree

[Brad Stark]

If Bran is able to interact with the past, he will have some limits.  I am not suggesting Bran will be omnipotent,  GRRM is on the record saying no one will have god like power. 

If Bran can change the past at all, it makes sense talking to himself would be one of the least major ways he could do it.  Especially if he would have died and only survived with his future self's help.

The idea of only 1 Bran is ridiculous.   Our Bran will not strangle himself trying to save Rickard from burning to death.

The idea our Bran is Bran the Builder is more believable,  but I still don't buy it.

[Black Crow]

If our Bran and Bob the Builder are one and the same I wouldn't see him as a single time travelling entity but rather Bran reborn/come again and fated like the other heroes to replay his fate again and again, unable to influence far less change anything

[Matthew.]

7 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, it would completely destroy the story.  

For instance, as his last chapter in ADWD all but demonstrates, Bran would never be able to resist warning Ned of his fate, should he go south and become Hand.   Bran wants his father back just as much as the other Stark kids.  I also doubt very much he'd be able to resist warning himself not to climb the First Keep on a certain day.

So for me it's obvious that GRRM is treating weirwood memories solely as memories, and Bloodraven was right in saying the past cannot be changed and communication with those in it is not possible.

I agree, but I'm going to play devil's advocate anyway. I apologize in advance for the stream of consciousness, babbling nonsense that is to follow.

If GRRM really wants to go the route that Bran can interact with the past in some limited fashion, it may be that changing history as Bran knows it is impossible within the "weirnet" system, but causal loops exist--the former being impossible because greenseers are not transcendent.

To use the example of saving Eddard, Bran cannot save Eddard, because saving Eddard requires that Bran exist in a time line where Bran knows that Eddard dies; Bran warns Eddard, Eddard escapes, but then Bran never learns that he needs to save Eddard, is never able to warn Eddard. Things revert, Eddard dies. Similarly, Bran can never stop his climb, because the climb is what leads him to the powers he needs to prevent his climb. 

In that sense, GRRM could write Bran as both theoretically powerful and frustratingly trapped--unable to change what he wants to change most, because his existence as a greenseer depends upon those very tragedies occurring, depends on history as he knows it occurring exactly as it has happened.

Where causal loops come in to play is that it may be that some of "history as Bran knows it" has been caused by Bran, that far from being able to change the past, he must engineer some of his own tragedies (and, perhaps, cause others by accident, or attempts to change history) as necessary stepping stones that will lead to the Last Greenseer--all of this must happen so that Bran will arrive at Bloodraven's cave, and do whatever it is that he's supposed to do going forward.
___

I still don't like that idea, because even though it precludes the idea that Bran will change the story as we know it, it still would suggest that Bran has been living in a deterministic universe, and his choices have never mattered.

[Black Crow]

I agree entirely. The world is as it is and while the projected title of the last book in this series is A Dream of Spring the last thing we want is to end with some green utopia and find this whole story was just a dream because Bran went back and warned people and manipulated things.

Instead I think that Bran's true influence on the past was illustrated by his attempt to speak to his father and all that Lord Eddard heard was a rustling of leaves in the wind.

If Bran is to use the past to manipulate the future it will not be a question changing the past but rather seeing the consequences of what happened last time and warning the present that a particular action is a baaaad idea. Whether anyone will listen is of course a different matter. 

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I agree entirely. The world is as it is and while the projected title of the last book in this series is A Dream of Spring the last thing we want is to end with some green utopia and find this whole story was just a dream because Bran went back and warned people and manipulated things.

Instead I think that Bran's true influence on the past was illustrated by his attempt to speak to his father and all that Lord Eddard heard was a rustling of leaves in the wind.

If Bran is to use the past to manipulate the future it will not be a question changing the past but rather seeing the consequences of what happened last time and warning the present that a particular action is a baaaad idea. Whether anyone will listen is of course a different matter. 

I don't fancy the notion that Bran can go back in time and change events that have already occurred, nor can he speak to the dead.  I don't discount the possibility that he can affect Jon or Arya in the recent past or that Jon at least can do the same.  He can certainly speak to Jon as  WeirBran and open Jon's third eye and I suspect that Jon as The Crow has done the same for Bran.  They both exist together in the present where morrows are not yet made and I suspect that Jon will not be confined by the river of time either.    I think they can only affect each other.

[JNR]

21 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The idea is you can go to the past (mentally/psionically), you can replay some events that seem very real, but those interactions never change the future, the "now" in the story.

Yes.  Another very similar plot device familiar to many reading this would be the Pensieve from the HP series.   Harry can investigate the past, but he can't change it.

As to the relevance to the story going forward... knowledge is power, so any means of getting knowledge is potentially powerful, especially on key subjects.   There are things Bran can learn by looking at the right places and times that might make a tremendous difference in the next two books.

(We're seeing that kind of idea play out right now in the US in the form of a special prosecutor: by investigating the past, he can potentially alter the future radically.  It's too bad he can't simply tap weirwood memories to get what he needs.)

[LynnS]

On 8/28/2017 at 4:43 PM, Brad Stark said:

A little off topic, but just got a new idea about BR and the 3 eyed crow.  We've speculated before that the 3EC might not be BR, or there might be 2 3EC's, since his behavior is somewhat different between different dreams.  Also BR's response when asked if he is the 3EC suggests he might not be.

Bran does ask that very question:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Bran I

"Afoot," he answered. "A step at a time."

"The road from Greywater to Winterfell went on forever, and we were mounted then. You want us to travel a longer road on foot, without even knowing where it ends. Beyond the Wall, you say. I haven't been there, no more than you, but I know that Beyond the Wall's a big place, Jojen. Are there many three-eyed crows, or only one? How do we find him?"

"Perhaps he will find us."

It is Coldhands who is sent to find BranCo.   An ancient man of the watch and therefore a crow.  Given his seeming skinchanging abilities, a crow of the three-eyed variety.

Jon then would also be a three-eyed crow.  And more interesting, to me a least, a hellcrow.

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Eddard IV

. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

A Storm of Swords - Jon II

His face was throbbing. Tormund stood over them bellowing, he saw from his right eye as he rubbed blood from his left. Then there were hoofbeats, shouts, and the clacking of old dry bones.

"Bag o' Bones," roared Tormund, "call off your hellcrow!"

"There's your hellcrow!" Rattleshirt pointed at Jon. "Bleeding in the mud like a faithless dog!" The eagle came flapping down to land atop the broken giant's skull that served him for his helm. "I'm here for him."

 

I find it curious that Tormund is exhorting the Bag o'Bones to call off his hellcrow when you consider that in the previous passage, Jon is attacked by Orell's eagle, leaving him with a bloody eye.  In another context, that sounds much like a reference to Bloodraven, perhaps previously an enemy of the Watch much as the current Lord Commander.   Bloodraven would also qualify as a three-eyed crow since he has a third eye.  Although at this stage he is more tree than man and what remains is mostly a bag o' bones.   Bran makes the distinction between the two and places them together:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Bran V

Jojen sat on Bran's bed. "Tell me what you dream."

He was scared, even then, but he had sworn to trust them, and a Stark of Winterfell keeps his sworn word. "There's different kinds," he said slowly. "There's the wolf dreams, those aren't so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there's dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name. That frightens me. But the worst dreams are when I fall." He looked down into the yard, feeling miserable. "I never used to fall before. When I climbed. I went everyplace, up on the roofs and along the walls, I used to feed the crows in the Burned Tower. Mother was afraid that I would fall but I knew I never would. Only I did, and now when I sleep I fall all the time."

So I would say that there is more than one 3EC acting in different capacities although I think it's more likely Jon who is teaching him to fly than BR.  Bran is the apprentice greenseer and Jon is the replacement Lord Commander. 

Where Bran ends up with Bloodraven is another mystery.  I suspect it is close to the Wall at the 'Grove of Nine Trees'.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"Hodor." Hodor plunged ahead, hurrying after the child and her torch, deeper into the earth. They passed another branching, and another, then came into an echoing cavern as large as the great hall of Winterfell, with stone teeth hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through its floor. The child in the leafy cloak wove a path through them. From time to time she stopped and waved her torch at them impatiently. This way, it seemed to say, this way, this way, faster.

There were more side passages after that, more chambers, and Bran heard dripping water somewhere to his right. When he looked off that way, he saw eyes looking back at them, slitted eyes that glowed bright, reflecting back the torchlight. More children, he told himself, the girl is not the only one, but Old Nan's tale of Gendel's children came back to him as well.

The roots were everywhere, twisting through earth and stone, closing off some passages and holding up the roofs of others. All the color is gone, Bran realized suddenly. The world was black soil and white wood. The heart tree at Winterfell had roots as thick around as a giant's legs, but these were even thicker. And Bran had never seen so many of them. There must be a whole grove of weirwoods growing up above us.

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

"I would so," Grenn insisted. "I'd see them a long way off."

Mormont himself confirmed Grenn's doubts. "Castle Black has no need of a godswood. Beyond the Wall the haunted forest stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the Andals brought the Seven across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods half a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods as well."

"My lord." The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet. The fat boy wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. "Might I … might I go as well? To say my words at this heart tree?"

A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.

The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and he saw Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to leave their horses outside the circle. "This is a sacred place, we will not defile it." 

When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking at each face in turn. No two were quite alike. "They're watching us," he whispered. "The old gods."

"Yes." Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him.

And so, Bran is not only being watched by more CotF, the gods are watching Jon and Sam take their oath in a place that has existed since the Dawn Age, a meer 1.5 miles north of Castle Black.  A place where human greenseers have existed in the past:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

The light dwindled again. Small as she was, the child-who-was-not-a-child moved quickly when she wanted. As Hodor thumped after her, something crunched beneath his feet. His halt was so sudden that Meera and Jojen almost slammed into his back.

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones of birds and beasts. But there were other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

Well and with some ravens perched atop their skulls.  LOL  With a back door down a sinkhole no less:
 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"Is this the only way in?" asked Meera.

"The back door is three leagues north, down a sinkhole."

Three leagues or nine miles north of the greenseers cave.   Roughly 10 miles north of Castle Black and 4 miles north of Othor and Jafr when they they are found. 

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Jon III

"Slave," muttered the raven.

Mormont leaned forward. "Every village we have passed has been abandoned. Yours are the first living faces we've seen since we left the Wall. The people are gone . . . whether dead, fled, or taken, I could not say. The animals as well. Nothing is left. And earlier, we found the bodies of two of Ben Stark's rangers only a few leagues from the Wall. They were pale and cold, with black hands and black feet and wounds that did not bleed. Yet when we took them back to Castle Black they rose in the night and killed. One slew Ser Jaremy Rykker and the other came for me, which tells me that they remember some of what they knew when they lived, but there was no human mercy left in them."

Closer to Castle Black another sinkhole:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon III

The mouth of the cave was a cleft in the rock barely wide enough for a horse, half concealed behind a soldier pine. It opened to the north, so the glows of the fires within would not be visible from the Wall. Even if by some mischance a patrol should happen to pass atop the Wall tonight, they would see nothing but hills and pines and the icy sheen of starlight on a half-frozen lake. Mance Rayder had planned his thrust well.

Within the rock, the passage descended twenty feet before it opened out onto a space as large as Winterfell's Great Hall. Cookfires burned amongst the columns, their smoke rising to blacken the stony ceiling. The horses had been hobbled along one wall, beside a shallow pool. A sinkhole in the center of the floor opened on what might have been an even greater cavern below, though the darkness made it hard to tell. Jon could hear the soft rushing sound of an underground stream somewhere below as well.

I think it very likely that Benjen and other rangers took advantage of the cave system for shelter and did meet with a dead end especially if the back door is also surrounded by wights.

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon III

"What are you doing here?" he asked her.

"I heard water. I wanted t'see how deep the cave went." She pointed with the torch. "There's a passage goes down further. I followed it a hundred paces before I turned back." 

"A dead end?"

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. It went on and on and on. There are hundreds o' caves in these hills, and down deep they all connect. There's even a way under your Wall. Gorne's Way."

 

I suspect that when Ygritte tells Jon about Gorne's way and the way under the Wall that she is talking about the Black Gate.   Except that only Gorne knows the way through the tunnels from the Black Gate or the words that open the Black Gate.  Sam's trepidation about finding the gate may have more to do with finding the exit to the gate through the tunnels.  It seems likely to me that Bran came out of the tunnel system close to the Night Fort in the place where the Wildlings are hiding before crossing the Wall.  Then they are taken east and north to the grove of nine trees which would account for their long journey.     

[Frey family reunion]

On 8/30/2017 at 11:43 AM, The Fattest Leech said:

This falls in line with the theme of GRRM's old story For a Single Yesterday, one of his three time travel stories, but one that is not like the others. I won't spoil too much in case anyone wants to read it, but basically there is a catastrophic event that that turns everyone's world upside down. The main protagonist tries to assist a secondary character who is struggling with the new reality and delves into a special drug that lets him go view the past. The idea is you can go to the past (mentally/psionically), you can replay some events that seem very real, but those interactions never change the future, the "now" in the story. It is also a way for the characters in the current timeline to learn from the past to better their future. And all of this happens near water and under a tree

It seems a lot depends on the nature of the collective consciousness of the weirnet.  Let's assume that whoever joins the weirnet subtly alters the  weirnet with their own abilities, personalities and memories.  Would this just affect the weirnet at the time they joined the collective or would the weirnet also be fundamentally changed in terms of personality, ability and memory in the past as well?  

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

It seems a lot depends on the nature of the collective consciousness of the weirnet.  Let's assume that whoever joins the weirnet subtly alters the  weirnet with their own abilities, personalities and memories.  Would this just affect the weirnet at the time they joined the collective or would the weirnet also be fundamentally changed in terms of personality, ability and memory in the past as well?  

Up to a point it might, but I think it would only be a matter of perception; seeing things in a different light. This might in turn affect or influence future events accordingly, but given the different concept of time I think we're looking at the old concept of the oil tanker which needs a couple of miles to stop or turn.

If we say for the sake of argument that the tree huggers are currently engaged in a cunning plan to wipe out all mankind, and Bran enables them to see the error of their ways its going to take a couple of hundred years to shut it down, and in the meantime winter is coming