The Orginal purpose for the crypts in Winterfell was a fortress

[Tucu]

16 minutes ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

But the bigger question is, what do the Old Gods themselves (the weirnet and the multitude of greenseers attached to its root system) want. It is them I am really accusing of being pro winter and anti dragon. And I think they may be the ones directly controlling the weird seasons.

I also don't expect actual ice dragons to be in this story, though they could be, but the point is that frigid cold has been established as a method to kill dragons by the author.

Yes, Jon and modern Starks certainly interpret their words as a warning, but I don't think that was their original meaning.

I see the weirnet having a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with humans. It feeds on blood and souls from men. So it need friendly ones to survive.

For the cause of the weird seasons (and the incoming Long Night) I am looking at old and current abuses of magic. The first Long Night would have been a delayed effect of the use of the Hammer of the Waters; in order to survive they ended braking the balance.

"Winter is coming" would be a mission statement more than a warning or a boast.

[Quoth the raven,]

The crypts are a resource and the castle was built to protect that resource from other men.  It  was a refuge used during the long night.  The people who lived in the area knew about it and used it to survive through the long night.  Brandon saw its value and claimed it for his family.  The Starks started feeding human blood to the tree and slowly built the castle to enclose the crypts and the surrounding area.  

[Princess Daenerys]

Likely not a fortress.  The crypts were the cave homes of the Children of the Forest.  It's one more thing that the First Men took from them.  

The Children of the forest are the Morlocks of George Martin's story.  The Morlocks are an underground race that was created by HG Wells.  They feed on the surface dwellers.  

[Mordred]

On 8/1/2018 at 9:08 PM, Frey Kings said:

Woah. Makes a lot of sense. What do you think the purpose of the Excavating was for?  I don't know.

And the Starks continued the practice of burying their dead kings because of the old ways  

Do you think they were expecting them to come back, Egyptian style?  They were not on the level of tech as the ancient Egyptian mummification but the cold slows down decay.  Kings of Winter may mean more than people think it does.  Like the Others are Starks?  The Starks become the Others?  

[Mordred]

On 8/3/2018 at 8:51 AM, Tucu said:

I see the weirnet having a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with humans. It feeds on blood and souls from men. So it need friendly ones to survive.

For the cause of the weird seasons (and the incoming Long Night) I am looking at old and current abuses of magic. The first Long Night would have been a delayed effect of the use of the Hammer of the Waters; in order to survive they ended braking the balance.

"Winter is coming" would be a mission statement more than a warning or a boast.

Bran's ancestor fed blood to the trees.  I am doubtful if it was a one off event.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

I hope there is a passage to beyond the wall through the crypts. That would be wicked.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 8/1/2018 at 7:38 PM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

As I have teased in other threads (I'm slowly working on a lengthy essay on this very subject), I would bet a thousand dollars there is an albino female greenseer in the crypts, enthroned like BR in the roots of the WF weirwood, absorbing the souls of all the Starks buried there. WF was in fact built as a fortress... to protect the heart tree... to protect HER.

I haven't finished the thread yet, but I agree with you on this that there is or will soon be someone on a weirwood throne under the crypts.  But my money is on 3EC/Bran/Loki being on the throne.

In Norse myth there are three main roots (and wells)  of the world tree Yggdrasil:

Urðarbrunnr, (“Well of Fate“ wyrd, where the Norns live) which I think corresponds to the Isle of Faces at the God's Eye,

Hvergelmir ("boiling bubbling spring") at Niflheim the land of mist, (Winterfell),

Mimirsbrunnr (Mimir's well) in Jotunheim the land of the Frost Giants--this is Bloodraven's cave, (Odin sacrificed an eye to drink from Mimir's well).

 

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 8/3/2018 at 5:49 AM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

In the short story The Ice Dragon, an ice dragon kills fire dragons by freezing them to death with frigid air.

My take on the Ice Dragon is that there were no dragons at all.  The whole story takes place in the WWI era, dragons are propeller airplanes and there is an invasion and the little girl has a very active imagination and is traumatized by the war and copes with it by retreating into her fantasies. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 8/22/2018 at 8:55 PM, Mordred said:

The Starks become the Others?  

Yes, I think they will lead them. 

Quote

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice

Quote

The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice,

Quote

"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

Bran will raise the dead kings of winter and march south.

 

[Legitimate_Bastard]

On 8/29/2018 at 12:22 AM, By Odin's Beard said:

Yes, I think they will lead them. 

Bran will raise the dead kings of winter and march south.

 

What an awesome theory. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 8/1/2018 at 5:32 PM, Frey Kings said:

Apparently its much bigger than the entire castle. And Brandon the builder didn't build the WF castle. Only the crypts. 

I agree with the premise that the crypts serve as a bombshelter for when the apocalypse comes.  This is a very common theme in George's work.  In Under Siege what remains of the American military lives in nuke-proof bombshelters because the US and USSR have nuked each other and the surface is devastated and irradiated.  The plot is that they have pinned all their hopes on a small group of "talents" who can send their consciousness back into the past to change the course of history.  Which is what I think Bran will do.

In Dark, Dark were the Tunnels, nuclear war on Earth forces everyone underground, and they live in the old subway tunnels.

Then in Dying of the Light the Kavalaan take to living underground because aliens have attacked their planet with aerial bombardment, ground forces, and plagues.  They had a whole city excavated into a mountain like Casterly Rock.

In the House of the Worm they lived in underground cities because their sun died out.

So the theme is whenever something bad happens you go underground.

But in ASOIAF, Brandon the Builder built Winterfell and the crypts AFTER the Long Night.  Which was a never-before-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world long winter, why would they think it was going to happen again and they should start prepping for it?  And how were there any survivors at all?  Did they just occupy the caves that they found there, which later got excavated to be the crypts? 

Quote

"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 like the idea that these cave systems were built by the Great Empire of the Dawn, as mining operations,  bombshelters, or subway tunnels.  And that all of the castles are linked underground via this system.  That would explain why Gorne's Way is so long, extending hundreds of miles underground.  And it would render the castles defenses useless as the CoTF and Others can just emerge inside the castle walls and slaughter everyone in their sleep.  The Legend of Gorne would foreshadow this, as well as Jaime's Weirwood dream where the Others attack him from secret caverns under Casterly Rock, and maybe Kevan getting stabbed to death by children who emerge from the darkness.

Quote

In summer the wormwalks were seldom used, save by rats and other vermin, but winter was a different matter. When the snows drifted forty and fifty feet high and the ice winds came howling out of the north, the tunnels were all that held Castle Black together.

wormways, the tunnels that linked the castle's keeps and towers below the earth

Towers often represent weirwoods and they are all linked by tunnels underground.

But then again, they could just be regular caves or firewyrm tunnels.

 

Brandon the Builder is said to have built the castle around the Godswood.  Presumably because there was something special about that spot.  But was the castle built to keep people out, or to keep something in?  The Mazes in Lorath are built around the opening to the underworld, is the maze so the CoTF can't find their way out?  "Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth" also.  And I think Harrenhal was built over a cave opening that leads to the Isle of Faces, then the CoTF called in the Targaryens to destroy him real quick.

 

Also, the building of the Wall, Winterfell, and the Crypts are all major public works projects that require thousands of laborers and tons of food to feed those laborers, and ton of raw materials, but immediately after the Long Night the population would have been decimated and civilization would have collapsed and it would have taken a very long time to recover to the point where major structures could be built.  And the Wall seems like something that the First Men could not have built.  I think the original Wall was a fused black stone relic of the Great Empire, and the First Men just started stacking ice blocks around it.

Quote

Whether the legends are true or not, it is plain that the First Men and the children of the forest (and even the giants, if we take the word of the singers) feared something enough that it drove them to begin raising the Wall. And this great construction, as simple as it is, is justly accounted among the wonders of the world. It may be that its earliest foundations were of stone—the maesters differ in this—but now all that can be seen for a distance of a hundred leagues is ice. Nearby lakes provided the material, which the First Men cut into huge blocks and hauled upon sledges to the Wall, and worked into place one by one. Now, thousands of years later, the Wall stands more than seven hundred feet tall at its highest point (though its height varies considerably over the hundred leagues of its length, as it follows the contours of the land).

That would parallel the Five Forts in Essos "Some say the Five Forts were built by the Pearl Emperor to guard against the Lion of Night and his demons."  But they were above ground fallout shelters, built to house 10,000 people each, to prevent civilization collapse from the Long Night.  How did they know to build these structures in advance?

 

Kinda off topic but the logistics of Winterfell geothermal features seem to be at odds with also having an extensive crypt system.  If the ground water level is so high that water is bubbling at the surface how can they have dry crypts many levels deep, wouldn't they would be full of hot water?  Also, by what mechanism are they pumping water through the walls of Winterfell?  Does this remind anyone of the Grey King's hall being warmed by "Nagga's living fire"?

[Legitimate_Bastard]

On 8/1/2018 at 6:32 PM, Frey Kings said:

Apparently its much bigger than the entire castle. And Brandon the builder didn't build the WF castle. Only the crypts. As we know, old customs die hard. So they continued to bury their dead there. Only the "Kings of Winter". IIRC Brandon or House Stark weren't Kings (yet). I forgot what he built above the grounds, but it was a single building. 

But isn't it puzzling that no one bothered to look around further into the collapsed or harder places of the crypts for generations? I think Brandon may have left a significant hint. Besides dragon's eggs. 

 

Thoughts?

I think there is a tunnel network beyond the wall.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

On 8/28/2018 at 3:55 PM, By Odin's Beard said:

I haven't finished the thread yet, but I agree with you on this that there is or will soon be someone on a weirwood throne under the crypts.  But my money is on 3EC/Bran/Loki being on the throne.

In Norse myth there are three main roots (and wells)  of the world tree Yggdrasil:

Urðarbrunnr, (“Well of Fate“ wyrd, where the Norns live) which I think corresponds to the Isle of Faces at the God's Eye,

Hvergelmir ("boiling bubbling spring") at Niflheim the land of mist, (Winterfell),

Mimirsbrunnr (Mimir's well) in Jotunheim the land of the Frost Giants--this is Bloodraven's cave, (Odin sacrificed an eye to drink from Mimir's well).

Yeah, I am super confident that someone is down there... An albino female progenitor of House Stark is my best guess, but I won't be too surprised if I'm wrong.

If you are interested in a totally different subject related to the Norse mythology influence, check out page 3 of the thread in my signature where we discuss the mechanics of time travel in depth as presented in GRRM's other stories, and how it might relate to asoiaf. We didn't really discuss Norse influence specifically in that thread, but that influence is definitely there, with the whole Norse circular time, Ragnarok yadda yadda.