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Heresy 206: of Starks and Walls


Black Crow

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1 hour ago, redriver said:

So could Ser Shadrich be the one and only Howland Reed?It may be the case as we'll see-there are plenty of hallmark GRRM hints,allusions,similarities and symbolisms to tantalize us-but maybe they're all red herrings.You decide.

Much of this work has already been done on this and other sites/blogs for which I can give links/references-though I didn't see the sigil/oath connection anywhere.

Let's look at the first appearance of Ser Shadrich in Brienne,AFFC.Brienne is journeying with Ser Creighton Longbough and Ser Illifer the penniless,two hedge knights of dubious renown, on her quest to find Sansa.They encounter a merchant along with another hedge knight.

         "ser Shadrich was a wiry,fox-faced man with a sharp nose and a shock of orange hair,mounted on a rangy chestnut courser.Though he could not have been more than five foot two,he had a cocksure manner."

So far the height seems to fit,not sure about the face and hair yet.That Howland is short,slim and strong is all we get by way of description when Meera is recounting the Knight of the Laughing Tree story.Meera's hair is light brown Jojen's is not given.Both have green eyes and are short and slim.So red hair is not confirmed for Howland but not ruled out either.The other option if it's not natural,is to die it.A crannogman would know where to find that.

We are not told their respective eye colours either.

In the WoW chapter,Alayne,

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Shadrich, from Sansa's view was a "short,sharp faced man with a brush of orange hair........so short he might have been taken for a squire,but his face belonged to a much older man.She saw long leagues in the wrinkles at the corner of his mouth,an old battle scar beneath his ear,and a hardness behind the eyes that no boy would ever have.

    This would square with Howland being a battle veteran and of similar age to him and to Ned Stark.Physically there are enough similarites to make it a possibility they are one and the same,imo.

Looks are one thing,what about actions and words?Shadrich is quite sharp of tongue-" You're a strapping healthy wench I'd say"He is also quick to suss put Brienne's quest.

       Ser Shadrich laughed."A little lost sister, is it?With blue eyes and auburn hair?"He laughed again."You are not the only hunter in the woods.I seek for Sansa Stark as well."

He's doing so for love,he says,love of gold,like a good hedge knight.But might it be for the love he bore his father and family?.There is an allusion to Ned in the line "'Tis true I'm no tourney night".

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He also declines to enter the lists at the Winged Knight tourney in the Vale,indicating that he's not there to become sweetrobin's bodyguard.He reinforces his Hedge Knight credentials when he says a bag of Dragons is all he can aspire to.Prior to this he grabbed Sansa's arm to prevent her from falling,like the Hound did.

So we have a hedge knight of similar size and stature to Howland,on a quest to find Sansa Stark for money,or maybe it's for love.Do we have any clues in his identity-Ser Shadrich the Mad Mouse of the Shady Glen?Mad, according to him because he seeks out blood and battle.Like mice crannogmen are not renowned for fighting or wars.Howland's an exception to the norm.Brienne does not recognize his shield or a place called Shady Glen.

The latter is reminiscent of Duskendale (where they are all headed).Not entirely sure of the connection here.We are minded of the Defiance when Ser Barristan rescued the Mad King.Maybe the rescue part has yet to happen.At least he's found Sansa.

The shield device is interesting-"A large white mouse with fierce red eyes,on bendy brown and blue.""The brown is for the lands I've roamed ,the blue for the rivers I've crossed.The mouse is me".

I'm not entirely sure why he chose a mouse other than they're small and associated with quiet.The later line referring to mice with wings being a silly sight leads us to think of bats, which are associated with Harrenhal through Houses Lothston and Whent.I think Sansa's grandmother was a Whent.Mad Danelle was a Lothston of Harrenhal.The colouring of the mouse is the same as the colours of the KotLT weirwood.and Ghost suggestive of the old gods and ice/fire.

The Mad Mouse shield seems to have strong association to the oath the Reeds swore at Winterfell-though I can't see any bonze/iron associations,the earth/water and ice/fire ones seem fairly obvious.

 

A good summary and as I pointed out when the chapter was first released a mouse with wings is a Fledermaus - a bat. A white one with red eyes is indeed per the colouring of a weirwood - and yes Ghost albeit Jon recognises his colouring as that of a weirwood and by extension the Old Gods. Similarly the earth and water seems obvious, but surely the bronze and iron is Ser Shadrich himself - the warrior.

As to the Shady Glen, as I suggested a couple of heresies ago, it doesn't appear in geography, which is why Brienne fails to recognise it; he comes from the shadows.

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3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Does anyone think The Black Gate is something the Children would build?  They do not seem to be builders, although a 700 foot plain Wall across the continent without armies or support or anything else seems more like them than man.  As others have suggested, the gate could be a human transformed, but that doesn't say anything about how it came into being.  The Oath being spoken to open the gate also seems against the idea it was originally a Children's creation, unless it was reprogrammed later, or Children were already helping men fight the Others.  

If the Wall was made by Children, men could have added the gate later, and almost certainly added the castles later.  But if the Gate is as old (or older) than the Wall, I think it means men built the Wall - possibly with the help of Children and almost certainly Giants.

Yes and no. It is by all appearances a magical portal of some kind. We've not so far seen what lies on the other side and no matter how clever the craftsmanship regular door don't open and close the way this one does. The necessity to recite that particular oath also seems contradictory and what I would suggest is that the portal is indeed very old but didn't originally have the door or at least not in the form the Scooby Gang pass through. I suspect that the white door was placed there after the fall of the Nights King to close off the portal to all but the oath-keepers.

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6 hours ago, JNR said:

Sometimes in Heresy, it's necessary to say it, because ideas have a way of evolving from "X is our imagination at work" (which is true) to "we know X" (which is not true) to "given X, we also know Y, and since Y, we also know Z".

I know what you mean, and we've reached the point where people have been thinking about and expanding upon their theories for so long that many posts can become self-referential, yet surely we can give this a reasonable amount of wiggle room, especially within this thread.

 For example, if someone subscribes to the Marvel Theories, and wants to expand on a theory under that umbrella, I think they need not go through the tedium of re-explaining the prior theory, citing the same quotes all over again, and then packing their post to the rafters with as many "maybes," "perhaps," and "in my opinions," as possible just to be extra certain that nobody will be given the mistaken impression that they hold to some undue level of certitude. 

People should be thoughtful about the speculative nature of discussion to the extent that it maintains open-minded and respectful discourse--however, there is a point where meticulously crafting each post just in case anyone is waiting to pounce on a missing "maybe," can, in its own way, become oppressive to free flowing discussion. 

6 hours ago, JNR said:

You don't create a 300-mile-long ward against Popsicles and wights with zero work... just as you don't create a 700-foot tall wall of physical ice with zero work.  

Also, of course, either the Wall has some sort of reinforcement magic holding it in place, or else GRRM just screwed up completely in thinking such a construction would do anything but implode. 

So for me it's beyond any reasonable doubt that the Wall as we see it today was built as a product of both magical and physical work.

I agree, and as I said previously, my interest in the magic part of the equation has less to do with the engineering of the Wall, and more to do with the 'working' of the magic, whatever the actual magic was: are wards and reinforcement spells "free?" Can they be conjured with the right words, or is there a price to pay? If so, who paid the price? 

At the least, I doubt that the story behind the Black Gate is a happy one, though to what extent the Black Gate is its own thing vs. being a part of some greater magic is unclear.

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13 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Sam in his searching of the archives comes across all sorts of records of food and stores, but makes a point of complaining he can find little about the blue-eyed lot and certainly doesn't mention finding anything about large construction projects. 

True, and while many of the magic explanations for the Wall are imperfect and unsatisfying, the Wall as a physical project has its own issues.

How long would it have taken humanity to recover in food supplies and manpower - both of which would have been devastated by the LN - to sufficiently undertake a project on the scale of the Wall?

Does the project stall every long winter, particularly with the aforementioned issues with food? 

Are we to imagine the Others and wights as still being active during the Wall's construction? If so, how could they have ever had a prayer of finishing it?

To some extent, I'm willing to accept that mentions in the annals of construction projects - as well as the above logistical problems - are missing because GRRM doesn't want to have to deal with them, and expects a certain amount of suspension of disbelief (eg, the Wall is 700 feet tall because that's more wonderous, and not because of some important plot reason); I accept it, but that such questions about the Wall exist at all opens up potentially interesting alternative avenues.

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12 hours ago, Matthew. said:

...my interest in the magic part of the equation has less to do with the engineering of the Wall, and more to do with the 'working' of the magic, whatever the actual magic was: are wards and reinforcement spells "free?" Can they be conjured with the right words, or is there a price to pay? If so, who paid the price? 

At the least, I doubt that the story behind the Black Gate is a happy one, though to what extent the Black Gate is its own thing vs. being a part of some greater magic is unclear.

Given what GRRM has written and said about such things I would say that there is indeed a price to pay and that it is a different and heavier one than expected.

I don't know whether the Black Gate is a stand-alone bit of magic or part of a bigger package but would thoroughly agree the story behind it is unlikely to be a happy one

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12 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Are we to imagine the Others and wights as still being active during the Wall's construction? If so, how could they have ever had a prayer of finishing it?
 

Well that's the other thing about Sam's researches. There appears to be nothing in the archives about the Watch's greatest victory and how the battle [or war] for the dawn was won, it doesn't even sound like and invasion. Rather, as he tells it, the references suggest a long history of skirmishes and encounters in the forest like that which befell Ser Waymar and the Mormont's rangers and then Mance's trek rather than a climactic battle

“The Others.” Sam licked his lips. “They are mentioned in the annals, though not as often as I would have thought. The annals I’ve found and looked at, that is…

“The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night… or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part’s plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don’t know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls.”

“We knew all this. The question is how do we fight them?”

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed,” said Sam, “and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian” He remembered the one he had faced in the haunted forest, and how it had seemed to melt away when he stabbed it with the dragonglass dagger Jon had made for him. “I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

“Dragonsteel?” Jon frowned. “Valyrian steel?”

 

 

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16 hours ago, Black Crow said:
23 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

While the evidence of walking on leaves is compelling, the idea of Howland and the crannognan being connected to the Faith is too much of a conflict.

:agree:

... and the White Walkers tread lightly on the snow

What I'm getting at here is that the High Sparrow is changing the nature of the Faith of the Seven.  The old High Sparrow has been replaced, the trappings of power put aside.  The notion that vows are often made to the old gods and the new calls to mind Melisandre's conviction that all the gods are one and there is only R'hllor and the Great Other.  It seems to me that the Seven are aspects of the old gods.  The Stranger and it's associaton with Faceless Men and their association with the old gods, makes the stranger an aspect of the many-faced god.  Same with maiden, mother and crone with the Morrigan.

If the KotLT is a champion of the old gods and he was teaching a lesson about honor and vows of true knights; this seems to be compatible with the High Sparrow's convictions.

16 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yes and no. It is by all appearances a magical portal of some kind. We've not so far seen what lies on the other side and no matter how clever the craftsmanship regular door don't open and close the way this one does. The necessity to recite that particular oath also seems contradictory and what I would suggest is that the portal is indeed very old but didn't originally have the door or at least not in the form the Scooby Gang pass through. I suspect that the white door was placed there after the fall of the Nights King to close off the portal to all but the oath-keepers.

Bran does say several times that the Gate is as old as the Wall.

But I suspect the weirwood door was there from the beginning since the oath must be spoken to pass from either side of the Wall.  Otherwise what is to stop anyone passing from the south side to the north side at will?  How would the ward work against living men if it's purpose is to stop the undead from passing?  After all the Gate seems to be only a ghost face or a glamor of some kind.  It makes more sense to me if there is a physical barrier like the doors to the House of Black and White.

Sam gives another detail concerning the Gate:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Bran IV

"He wasn't a green man. He wore blacks, like a brother of the Watch, but he was pale as a wight, with hands so cold that at first I was afraid. The wights have blue eyes, though, and they don't have tongues, or they've forgotten how to use them." The fat man turned to Jojen. "He'll be waiting. We should go. Do you have anything warmer to wear? The Black Gate is cold, and the other side of the Wall is even colder. You—"

I'm not sure what that implies. 

 

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2 hours ago, LynnS said:

Sam gives another detail concerning the Gate:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Bran IV

"He wasn't a green man. He wore blacks, like a brother of the Watch, but he was pale as a wight, with hands so cold that at first I was afraid. The wights have blue eyes, though, and they don't have tongues, or they've forgotten how to use them." The fat man turned to Jojen. "He'll be waiting. We should go. Do you have anything warmer to wear? The Black Gate is cold, and the other side of the Wall is even colder. You—"

I'm not sure what that implies. 

Interesting. I wonder whether he means the vaults as a whole are cold, or that there is a coldness centralized around the Black Gate. The latter is tempting, particularly in light of another quality of the Gate:

Quote

A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it. 

Variations of "pale glow," "pale light," and "glows like milk/milkglass/moonlight" are used in relation to the weapons of the Others, their bones, Dawn in Eddard's fever dream, and ghost grass.

 

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21 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

But if the Gate is as old (or older) than the Wall, I think it means men built the Wall - possibly with the help of Children and almost certainly Giants.

I had always assumed, based on the presentation of the LH's story, as well as the gods and sorcery of the CotF becoming the gods and sorcery of the FM, that we were to read the Wall as a joint effort between the FM and the CotF.

If that was the case, though, then the CotF must have been feeling extraordinarily benevolent in regards to the Wall's placement: the southern border of the Haunted Forest, the largest tract of deep forest in modern Westeros, and possibly the largest even at that time.

If we take CotF and FM friendship at face value (which, personally, I do not), and assume that the Wall took centuries to complete, this would imply that the CotF either willingly accepted the Haunted Forest as a loss - despite already conceding so much land in the Pact - and only took up residence when the coming of the Andals forced them to do so.

Or, even more bizarrely, the CotF of the Haunted Forest spent centuries walling themselves in on the dangerous side of the Wall; even accounting for warded caves, that would seem a rather uncomfortable way to live.

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22 hours ago, JNR said:

The problem IMO is that we don't even know what the Black Gate really is.  We don't know if it's a door -- meaning a flat chunk of weirwood that was cut from the trunk of a felled tree and then ensorcelled somehow -- or... something quite different from that.

This is the thing...  the wierwood that grows there now wasn't always there since it is bursting up through the slate floor of the kitchen.  My guess is that the door is made from a weirwood that once grew there.  I imagine that it is oval shaped like a shield.

Sam can walk through, but Hodor is too tall:

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Bran IV

"Then pass," the door said. Its lips opened, wide and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he went, and then it was Bran's turn. Hodor ducked, but not low enough. The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear.

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

Interesting. I wonder whether he means the vaults as a whole are cold, or that there is a coldness centralized around the Black Gate. The latter is tempting, particularly in light of another quality of the Gate:

Variations of "pale glow," "pale light," and "glows like milk/milkglass/moonlight" are used in relation to the weapons of the Others, their bones, Dawn in Eddard's fever dream, and ghost grass.

 

I guess the question is whether or not Sam actually puts his hands on the door to push it open after the mouth expands.

This also brings to mind Jaqen's oath by all thegods, when he places his hand inside the mouth of the weirwood at Harrenhall.  Swearing on the Black Gate? 

Edit:  Also the scene where Othor attempts to force his hand into Jon's mouth.  Perhaps another allusion to the Black Gate and the one who controls it - the 13th Lord Commander?  The purpose of which is to stop the wights or some other monster from forcing it's way through?

I wonder if this is some clue to Hodor (hold the door closed!)

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4 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Sam can walk through, but Hodor is too tall

Bran is in a basket on Hodor's back. There is a similar scene with a door in Bran III, where it is better explained. Bran even tells Hodor to duck in that scene. Bran + Hodor are too tall. 

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4 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

Bran is in a basket on Hodor's back. There is a similar scene with a door in Bran III, where it is better explained. Bran even tells Hodor to duck in that scene. Bran + Hodor are too tall. 

Yes, I'm curious about the door's physical dimensions.  Tall enough for Sam, but not for Hodor.

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5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Yes, I'm curious about the door's physical dimensions.  Tall enough for Sam, but not for Hodor.

That is the other scene:

Thankfully there was no third time, and the water never got up past Hodor's waist, though the Reeds were in it up to their chests. And before long they were on the island, climbing the steps to the holdfast. The door was still stout, though its heavy oak planks had warped over the years and it could no longer be closed completely. Meera shoved it open all the way, the rusted iron hinges screaming. The lintel was low. "Duck down, Hodor," Bran said, and he did, but not enough to keep Bran from hitting his head. "That hurt," he complained.

 

Bran III - A Storm of Swords

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3 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

That is the other scene:

Thankfully there was no third time, and the water never got up past Hodor's waist, though the Reeds were in it up to their chests. And before long they were on the island, climbing the steps to the holdfast. The door was still stout, though its heavy oak planks had warped over the years and it could no longer be closed completely. Meera shoved it open all the way, the rusted iron hinges screaming. The lintel was low. "Duck down, Hodor," Bran said, and he did, but not enough to keep Bran from hitting his head. "That hurt," he complained.

 

Bran III - A Storm of Swords

The Black Gate itself, not the holdfast.  How tall is it?

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2 hours ago, SirArthur said:

I'm intrigued now about the secret walkway beneath the lake to the tower.

Its a quite common feature - a causeway built below water level, sufficiently deep not to be seen but shallow enough and hard enough to allow somebody who knows the trick to wade across safely; the trick of course being that  it doesn't run straight and true

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2 hours ago, LynnS said:

I guess the question is whether or not Sam actually puts his hands on the door to push it open after the mouth expands.

This also brings to mind Jaqen's oath by all thegods, when he places his hand inside the mouth of the weirwood at Harrenhall.  Swearing on the Black Gate? 

 

I'd rather see it as the other way around; that the mouth of a weirwood tree offers a way to give something to the Old Gods and that the portal reflects that

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26 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Its a quite common feature - a causeway built below water level, sufficiently deep not to be seen but shallow enough and hard enough to allow somebody who knows the trick to wade across safely; the trick of course being that  it doesn't run straight and true

Not in that regard. More that it seems to reassemble the stairway down to the Black Gate more or less exactly 50 leagues away from it. Hodor both times has to duck. Both times he fails. Both times we have stairways going up (and also down in case of the tower). 

They found themselves in a gloomy strongroom, barely large enough to hold the four of them. Steps built into the inner wall of the tower curved away upward to their left, downward to their right, behind iron grates. Bran looked up and saw another grate just above his head. A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them. Bran III

The well was the thing he liked the least, though. It was a good twelve feet across, all stone, with steps built into its side, circling down and down into darkness. The walls were damp and covered with niter, but none of them could see the water at the bottom, not even Meera with her sharp hunter's eyes. "Maybe it doesn't have a bottom," Bran said uncertainly. Bran IV

 

The text definitly does not mirror that but he also is not contradicting. Just the double scene with the ducking Hodor made me think why we have this scene mirrored at the Black Gate.

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