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The Night King and Northern Castles


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So, after seeing the two battle scenes in this episode and Sansa already acknowledging that all of the North will basically fall back to Winterfell how are Northern Castles going to holdout when the Nigh King comes to the other side of the wall? In the show, Highgarden fell in like 2 seconds and we have no idea why (outside of D&D deciding it had to).  At least Casterly Rock fell because of Tyrion's secret passage way.  After the fight at Hardhome, I'm not really sure what the Night King's strategy is outside of just overwhelming a castle walls by having Wights climb over each other, giants doing what Wight giants do (b/c Wun Wun was useless in the BoB), and Mammoths/ice spiders doing whatever it is that they do.  

Spoiler

I know from the leaks that the Night King takes one of Danny's dragons and if true that'll obviously make this a little easier to see what may happen

I get that in the show, we won't wont see very many battles that cover this and rather it'll be a time warp or quick dialogue covering this.  But in terms of the show or book, how exactly is this going to play out?

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They aren't, any battle will be at winterfell. Those walls have magic in them from bran the builder and whatever is under winterfell. And there is now a stark in winterfell. Why that is so important? How about all the dead starks rise and fight the dead. What was brans stone dragon? Winterfell is where whatever is going to happen happens. If winterfell falls westeros is lost.

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6 minutes ago, JRRStark said:

They aren't, any battle will be at winterfell. Those walls have magic in them from bran the builder and whatever is under winterfell. And there is now a stark in winterfell. Why that is so important? How about all the dead starks rise and fight the dead. What was brans stone dragon? Winterfell is where whatever is going to happen happens. If winterfell falls westeros is lost.

I mean I agree the only important battle is going to happen at Winterfell. But in the episode Sansa talked about food being shipped into Winterfell before the other castles fall or people retreat to Winterfell.  Did I misunderstand that it was understood everyone was just gonna come chill in Winterfell if the wall fell? 

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Actually in the battle of the bastards wun wun played a large part (although they could have used him far better and gave him basica armor or even just a shield and a tree pulled out of the ground) by taking out winterfells gates in less then a minute he essentially ended the siege. A giant wight could essentially destroy winterfell by banging on the gates and letting all the little wights in.Also I think if you want to find a loop hole in terms of the wights being spiderman you could say that they climbed a wooden wall which could have had some hand holds in it and the ones who chased bran did so in a tunnel where there was roots going through it and such providing places to grab with their hands. In reality the way the wights are shown in the show make them impossible to beat.

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On 8/2/2017 at 9:25 AM, Sir Dingleberry said:

So, after seeing the two battle scenes in this episode and Sansa already acknowledging that all of the North will basically fall back to Winterfell how are Northern Castles going to holdout when the Nigh King comes to the other side of the wall?

They're not going to hold out. That's why everyone is shipping food to Winterfell, and why Sansa is saying they're going to fall back to Winterfell if the Night King crosses the Wall: because they're going to abandon their castles and fall back to Winterfell if the Night King crosses the Wall, exactly as she said.

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1 hour ago, falcotron said:

They're not going to hold out. That's why everyone is shipping food to Winterfell, and why Sansa is saying they're going to fall back to Winterfell if the Night King crosses the Wall: because they're going to abandon their castles and fall back to Winterfell if the Night King crosses the Wall, exactly as she said.

See I couldn't tell what exactly she was saying. Whether shipping the grain to winterfell was because winterfell was the fail safe for when everyone starts to fall or everyone was heading to winterfell regardless if the wall fell. 

Either way I don't see how in the show (not bringing any book info into this) that winterfell is even capable of holding out for long. There is just too many dead. It'll be like World War Z when they took out Israel. 

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1 hour ago, Sir Dingleberry said:

See I couldn't tell what exactly she was saying. Whether shipping the grain to winterfell was because winterfell was the fail safe for when everyone starts to fall or everyone was heading to winterfell regardless if the wall fell. 

Either way I don't see how in the show (not bringing any book info into this) that winterfell is even capable of holding out for long. There is just too many dead. It'll be like World War Z when they took out Israel. 

They've left a lot more implicit this season, and sometimes I'm filling in gaps based on the books, things they've said in interviews, historical knowledge and common sense, or just random guessing, and then forget I've done that. If that happened here, apologies.

Meanwhile, I think you're overestimating the size of the army. There are tens of millions of people living around the borders of Jerusalem. There are tens of thousands of people living beyond the Wall. (Subtract the ones Jon saved, add whatever stragglers they can pick up in the North who don't evacuate south in time, it's still in the same general range.) Also, zombies are no more susceptible to fire than humans, but wights go up as if they're soaked in oil; it would be a lot easier to stop the ramp-of-bodies move.

Of course if I were the Night King, I'd just go around. From what we saw in S5, it looks like the reason it's hard to bypass Winterfell is that all of the lands around it are frozen, barren forests and plains, which sucks if you're leading a bunch of southern knights and Essosi mercenaries, but isn't a problem at all if you're leading a bunch of walking corpsicles that don't eat. And once you freeze the marshes and walk into the Riverlands, you can probably convert a million new wights before anyone gets organized. At that point, who cares that Jon has tens of thousands of people armed with dragonglass at your back? That should be easy to hold off, or to just ignore.

 

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On ‎03‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 9:12 PM, Sir Dingleberry said:

I mean I agree the only important battle is going to happen at Winterfell. But in the episode Sansa talked about food being shipped into Winterfell before the other castles fall or people retreat to Winterfell.  Did I misunderstand that it was understood everyone was just gonna come chill in Winterfell if the wall fell? 

I think it was mentioned somewhere that in a normal winter the size of winterfell swells to several thousand as people come in from farms and smaller holdings. So if the wall fell or indeed there was any attack even from the south it would make sense that most people would retreat to winterfell as it has (before it was burned) a double wall defence and plenty of room. Also the crypts are huge and it has the hot springs, there are several keeps inside most unused. Basically the place is massive. So yes If stocked with enough food winterfell is well equipped to withstand any attack.

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Yes everybody could flee south but what would be the point, The NK's army will just keep coming, the further they come the more dead they will have. Which I think was basically what happened the first time (long night??). As to wun wun tearing down the gates. He did but he was also killed in so doing and they were not prepared for giants. Jon will be better organised with burning oil and such stuff. The walls of winterfell are also smooth and designed to prevent people scaling them. There is also the crypts with one narrow entrance. To run south wouldn't help in the long run as eventually you run out of south. So it makes sense to make winterfell the last stand. It would make more sense if Jon could convince anyone else of this. As to the other castles. Some are just wooden fortifications and none can compare to winterfell

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13 hours ago, falcotron said:

They've left a lot more implicit this season, and sometimes I'm filling in gaps based on the books, things they've said in interviews, historical knowledge and common sense, or just random guessing, and then forget I've done that. If that happened here, apologies.

Meanwhile, I think you're overestimating the size of the army. There are tens of millions of people living around the borders of Jerusalem. There are tens of thousands of people living beyond the Wall. (Subtract the ones Jon saved, add whatever stragglers they can pick up in the North who don't evacuate south in time, it's still in the same general range.) Also, zombies are no more susceptible to fire than humans, but wights go up as if they're soaked in oil; it would be a lot easier to stop the ramp-of-bodies move.

Of course if I were the Night King, I'd just go around. From what we saw in S5, it looks like the reason it's hard to bypass Winterfell is that all of the lands around it are frozen, barren forests and plains, which sucks if you're leading a bunch of southern knights and Essosi mercenaries, but isn't a problem at all if you're leading a bunch of walking corpsicles that don't eat. And once you freeze the marshes and walk into the Riverlands, you can probably convert a million new wights before anyone gets organized. At that point, who cares that Jon has tens of thousands of people armed with dragonglass at your back? That should be easy to hold off, or to just ignore.

 

I got ya. And I get the number disparages but as they come south they're just going to pick up more numbers. You also act like D&D will ever give us a clear number on the wights because once they do they'll have to actually limit themselves. And the only time we've seen them fight it's been hard home where the goal was to just force as many numbers against the walls as possible (I get castles are more fortified and defensible than hardhome). I also get the whole going around but the north (in terms of the books) is the only real force against the night kind because of history and magic. I'm excluding Danny from this because the books are unclear and show is all over the place. 

itll just be interesting to see the fight and how D&D contradict themselves from what they've established so far. 

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8 hours ago, Sir Dingleberry said:

I got ya. And I get the number disparages but as they come south they're just going to pick up more numbers. You also act like D&D will ever give us a clear number on the wights because once they do they'll have to actually limit themselves. And the only time we've seen them fight it's been hard home where the goal was to just force as many numbers against the walls as possible (I get castles are more fortified and defensible than hardhome).

Well, I don't think D&D will give us clear numbers (although they did actually say "tens of thousands" in one of the DVD extras, I'm pretty sure think they don't consider themselves bound to those extras as canon). But still, it's pretty clear that Hardhome didn't increase their army a thousandfold or anything, and Eastwatch (assuming that's where they get past the wall) isn't going to either. A well-defended castle, with months to prepare and fortify, with an opponent who understands how to fight them a little better than last time, it's not going to look like Hardhome, or like World War Z.

So, while I don't expect the show to do a good job explaining all of the detailed tactical reasons why Winterfell can hold out as well as it will, I won't have much trouble accepting that it does even without explanation, because it's easily plausible.

8 hours ago, Sir Dingleberry said:

I also get the whole going around but the north (in terms of the books) is the only real force against the night kind because of history and magic.

But that's exactly why the NK should be happy to bypass the North and fight the Riverlands first. No Stark magic, no Winterfell magic, almost no Old Gods magic at all. It should be child's play. Don't fight the North until you've got millions of new wights, and the Stark's army has been huddled in a frozen castle for a year on preserved food.

I'm sure the books will have some reason why he can't do that, but I doubt the show will explain it. Which is probably for the best, because their explanation would probably be on par with the one we got for why Dany had to hit Casterly Rock first: the Walker equivalent to Tyrion just proclaims that they have to, everyone else nods because he's the clever one, so now it's explained.

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