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Can the White Walkers endanger Essos?


Pandean

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So, I was just thinking...if the WWs breach the Wall, war for Dawn, etc. etc. Will only Westeros be in trouble or is it likely that Essos will be too? So far there is no chatter about what, if anything, could happen to Essos. Essos doesn't even know about the WW thing happening in Westeros, probably.

Could the White Walkers endanger Essos in some way, sooner or later? Considering they apparently can't swim, or make boats, or anything.

That being said, if Essos is safe, at least everyone can flee there if they fuck up bad enough

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I dont know whether Essos is in danger from the WW...

But there are many people who know about the Battle with the Great Other. The followers of R'hillor knows that the Great other is R'hillor nemesis, and there will come a day after a long summer when the cold breathe of darkness will fall heavy on the WORLD. They also know that in this dread hour Azor Ahai will be reborn drawing Lightbringer from the fire, and the darkness shall flee before him.

The Red priests and priestesses are preaching that Daenerys is the one who was promised. From the fire she was reborn to remake the World. We heard Kinvara, the First Servant of the Lord of Light, say "Daenerys has been sent to lead the people against the darkness in this war and in the great war still to come." In the next episode we might see Melisandre coming back from Volantis with Kinvara and other followers of the Lord of Light to help the Mother of Dragons fight the darkness and bring the "endless summer".

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The real threat of the White Walkers isn't just their army, it's the fact that they bring winter south. And according to Essosi myths, the last Long Night affected Essos—maybe not as badly as Westeros, but still pretty badly. The Rhoyne froze halfway down its length and stayed frozen for a decade. What do you think that did to the people living in what's now Norvos, or Braavos? Even in Volantis, I'm pretty sure they'd have a hard time raising as much food as they do today, and in a highly urbanized population like the Free Cities have, that's disastrous.

And if they freeze things enough, there could be an ice bridge for them to cross. Whether that would be at the Stepstones (where the sea is very shallow, and at least according to legends used to be a land bridge) or somewhere farther north (where the sea is much colder, and already has ice floes in winter) I don't know, but either way, it would be trouble. Especially when you consider that if they've already killed off most of Westeros, that's another 40 million wights. That's nearly 1000 times bigger than the current threat.

At least they can't do much to Central Essos. The Dothraki destroyed all civilization there so completely that there's nobody but maybe 100K Dothraki, and they all left for Westeros. Being an empty, barren wasteland under a pile of snow isn't all that much different than being an empty, barren wasteland without the snow.

 

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The white walkers may not have the technology to make ships, but the wights should in theory be able to operate one if they're coordinated enough to retrieve a dragon from the water using heavy chains.

Up until now, they have only been able to kill and resurrect wildlings and men of the night's watch, so the opportunity to seize a fleet of ships has been limited. This will change once they're south of the wall. They also have an ice dragon now for aerial strikes, which will make the fleets of Westeros easy targets.

My guess is that we'll see undead Ironborn.

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1 minute ago, Khorkalba said:

My guess is that we'll see undead Ironborn.

My guess is that we'll see undead Ironborn next season if the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie broke $200M domestic or $800M worldwide, and otherwise we won't. :)

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The White Walkers just need to catch some krakans, turn 'em, then use them to pull chucks of ice across the Narrow Sea :P In the books, I remember reading that there may be a horn that can call krakans from deep within the sea, and control them in the same way the dragon-binder can control dragons, supposedly.

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12 minutes ago, Dawn of Fyre said:

The White Walkers just need to catch some krakans, turn 'em, then use them to pull chucks of ice across the Narrow Sea :P In the books, I remember reading that there may be a horn that can call krakans from deep within the sea, and control them in the same way the dragon-binder can control dragons, supposedly.

Yeah, it's on Claw Isle. Which means it's probably safe from the dead until they've taken most of Westeros and frozen over the Blackwater.

Interestingly, the first major thing Davos did was advise Stannis not to attack Claw Isle as Axell Florent wanted right after losing the Battle of Blackwater. If not for him, they could have captured the kraken horn and brought it north, leaving it as much easier pickings for the Others.

But really, screw krakens, the Night King needs to get himself one of those sea dragons that supposedly eats krakens for breakfast. That would be the way to cross the Narrow Sea in style. Even if they supposedly only exist on the wrong side of the continent, surely it's worth the trip around the Dornish horn.

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4 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Yeah, it's on Claw Isle. Which means it's probably safe from the dead until they've taken most of Westeros and frozen over the Blackwater.

Interestingly, the first major thing Davos did was advise Stannis not to attack Claw Isle as Axell Florent wanted right after losing the Battle of Blackwater. If not for him, they could have captured the kraken horn and brought it north, leaving it as much easier pickings for the Others.

But really, screw krakens, the Night King needs to get himself one of those sea dragons that supposedly eats krakens for breakfast. That would be the way to cross the Narrow Sea in style. Even if they supposedly only exist on the wrong side of the continent, surely it's worth the trip around the Dornish horn.

Nah, the Night King will just ferry his army across, twelve at a time, with his undead dragon. :P The guy is functionally immortal, so why rush the end of the world? Lol, I just realized that the Night King could take twelve or more wights and White Walkers, fly directly east over the ocean for a thousand or more miles, then fly directly south into Essos. Use the wights to kill unsuspecting Essosians, and the White Walkers to resurrect them... and the army will raise in numbers fast.

Unless the Wall's magic works like a line across the world, this is one method in bypassing the Wall :D But... where is the fun in that?

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2 minutes ago, Dawn of Fyre said:

Nah, the Night King will just ferry his army across, twelve at a time, with his undead dragon. :P

He doesn't even need to ferry that many. There's tens of millions of potential wights waiting for him in Essos. Just bring enough to kill off a village in the outlands of Braavos or something, raise those dead, repeat until he's got enough to take a town, and so on until he's ready to take down the Free Cities themselves.

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12 minutes ago, falcotron said:

He doesn't even need to ferry that many. There's tens of millions of potential wights waiting for him in Essos. Just bring enough to kill off a village in the outlands of Braavos or something, raise those dead, repeat until he's got enough to take a town, and so on until he's ready to take down the Free Cities themselves.

Does this equal a plot hole now? :P Unless the wall can stop them from passing, even when they're thousands of miles off lands, they could easily just invade both Essos and Westeros. A two-prong attack would be effective. Although, we don't actually know how intelligent the White Walkers are in the show. Perhaps they are like computers programmed with one goal, to kill humans - since the Children made them for that purpose. And perhaps they can't formulate such intricate plans. The Night King seems to be just marching south while reacting to all living people, killing them for fodder.

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22 minutes ago, Dawn of Fyre said:

Does this equal a plot hole now? :P Unless the wall can stop them from passing, even when they're thousands of miles off lands, they could easily just invade both Essos and Westeros. A two-prong attack would be effective. Although, we don't actually know how intelligent the White Walkers are in the show. Perhaps they are like computers programmed with one goal, to kill humans - since the Children made them for that purpose. And perhaps they can't formulate such intricate plans. The Night King seems to be just marching south while reacting to all living people, killing them for fodder.

If the Night King's goal is, say, to capture the Isle of Faces, or Winterfell, or Bran, or just to head south (because by doing so he brings winter to lower latitudes all around the world), then a side trip to Essos would be a waste of time and effort. If his goal is to kill all humans, then it might make sense. Since we don't know what his goal is yet, it's kind of silly to say that it's a plot hole, unless you want to call any mystery they haven't revealed yet a plot hole. ("The show hasn't told us who Jon's mother is after 3 seasons! Bad writing!")

And besides, the Night King isn't killing all living people for fodder, only the ones who don't have names or whose arcs are clearly finished. I mean, Olly never figured out that if he killed Jon the show would just have to bring him back to life, but the Night King guessed it with no problem. That implies a level of understanding of story structure at least at the level of a television executive, if not a human.

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2 hours ago, falcotron said:

And besides, the Night King isn't killing all living people for fodder, only the ones who don't have names or whose arcs are clearly finished. I mean, Olly never figured out that if he killed Jon the show would just have to bring him back to life, but the Night King guessed it with no problem. That implies a level of understanding of story structure at least at the level of a television executive, if not a human.

Perfect reasoning and level of understanding.

FWIW, I don't think the show will bother showing Essos vs WW, even if it is a threat. The show will end with the NK and WW losing at Winterfell (where Winter fell) and humans bickering about that throne some more, or the show will end with the NK and WW continuing their ominous march south with our heroes unable to stop them.

In the game of thrones, you win or die, there is no middle ground.

When dead men and worse come hunting for us in the night, you think it matters who sits the iron throne?

If you think this has a happy ending you haven't been paying attention.

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7 hours ago, Hodor of House Hodor said:

FWIW, I don't think the show will bother showing Essos vs WW, even if it is a threat.

True. Especially since the only named characters left in all of Essos are way down in Dragon's Bay, except for Jaqen, and it's hard to imagine a side-plot about him heroically fighting off the Walkers to temporarily save a bunch of anonymous Braavosi.

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Even if the WW can't go over there they can still screw over essos because according to what we know about the last time the WW came it turned into winter and didn't come out until the WW were defeated. Even if you could go far south  enough so you wouldn't be living in snow forever the cosntant cold weather would screw up all the local plants there and cause a massive famine and enviromental disaster. Even if the fact that the plants and such would still be effected if they went far south enough then you would have a mass migration south which would result in more then a few wars since having millions of new people come south would not go over well. So basically the WW can doom essos even if they can't go over there. However I have to imagine that the WW would have some way to get over there even if it's by making massive icebergs come together to create a bridge

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17 hours ago, snow is the man said:

Even if the WW can't go over there they can still screw over essos because according to what we know about the last time the WW came it turned into winter and didn't come out until the WW were defeated. Even if you could go far south  enough so you wouldn't be living in snow forever the cosntant cold weather would screw up all the local plants there and cause a massive famine and enviromental disaster. Even if the fact that the plants and such would still be effected if they went far south enough then you would have a mass migration south which would result in more then a few wars since having millions of new people come south would not go over well. So basically the WW can doom essos even if they can't go over there.

Going by the scant information we have about the Rhoynar and Yi Tish myths and so on, I don't know that they'd be doomed as in civilization collapses and 99.9% of the population dies with the remainder reduced to a hunter-gatherer existence in the frozen wastes.

But it will hardly be a walk in the park—at least tens of millions will die, many cities will be abandoned, with chaos on a scale similar to the Century of Blood, and possibly even worse than that.

17 hours ago, snow is the man said:

However I have to imagine that the WW would have some way to get over there even if it's by making massive icebergs come together to create a bridge

Yeah, the Shivering Sea is already cold enough to have icebergs even before the Walkers show up. Alternatively, freezing over the Stepstones and walking to Tyrosh seems plausible, and thematically appropriate (since smashing the land bridge that used to connect Dorne to the Disputed Lands was the Children's first attempt to stop the First Men, before creating the Walkers).

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