Craster: Sacrificing his sons to the WW

[Legitimate_Bastard]

Will there be more on Crasters backstory (how the sacrifices began/how long they have been ongoing). I want to know more!

[Euron III Greyjoy]

8 hours ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

Will there be more on Crasters backstory (how the sacrifices began/how long they have been ongoing). I want to know more!

Maybe. The only POV I could see finding out that information is Bran, who would either see it in one of his visions, or Bloodraven will tell him. If the Black Gate at the Nightfort is anything to go by, the Nights Watchmen probably gave children to the Others as part of a pact. I imagine Craster had a similar deal with them. 

 

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

10 hours ago, EloImFizzy said:

If the Black Gate at the Nightfort is anything to go by, the Nights Watchmen probably gave children to the Others as part of a pact.

Can you expand on that please? It's the first I've heard of this idea.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

I never envisioned the sacrifice being part of the pact. Plus Craster was described as old and didn't have any sons to continue the tradition/carry on the line. That throws up alot of continuity questions for me. 

[Euron III Greyjoy]

6 hours ago, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

Can you expand on that please? It's the first I've heard of this idea.

The Night's King use to make sacrifices to the Others, and the Others want babies, so he probably delivered babies through the Black Gate. The Black Gate is basically a white weirwood face that opens up by its mouth, so in a way it kind of looks like they are sacrificing children to the Old Gods. 

[Seaserpent]

On 8/29/2018 at 6:11 PM, EloImFizzy said:

The Night's King use to make sacrifices to the Others, and the Others want babies, so he probably delivered babies through the Black Gate. The Black Gate is basically a white weirwood face that opens up by its mouth, so in a way it kind of looks like they are sacrificing children to the Old Gods. 

So infact craster took the role as new deliverer at his homeadres? If he is doing it to please the WW and honor the pact, why are the WW still going south or are they not?

[AlaskanSandman]

On 8/29/2018 at 2:45 AM, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

Can you expand on that please? It's the first I've heard of this idea.

Well the Night's King at least was sacrificing children through the Black Gate, and the Black Gate was there before him for something. He was after all, the 13th L.C. So 12 other men at least may have been doing the same. We don't know when the Kitchen was built above it either. As far as more, idk. The purpose of the door is suspect though.

[AlaskanSandman]

48 minutes ago, Seaserpent said:

So infact craster took the role as new deliverer at his homeadres? If he is doing it to please the WW and honor the pact, why are the WW still going south or are they not?

Do we know that they are? We know they live beyond the Wall, so any activity of them in the North shouldn't be a surprise. They rule the North. As far as them trying to invade the south? What evidence do we have for that yet? Other than maybe them chasing after Crasters last son now.  We know they kill wildlings, and we know they attacked the Night's Watch at the Fist when they were gathered beyond the Wall in numbers. Not really much to go on

[Lady Barbrey]

On 8/28/2018 at 7:56 AM, Legitimate_Bastard said:

Will there be more on Crasters backstory (how the sacrifices began/how long they have been ongoing). I want to know more!

Me too!

One thing we do know is that there seems to have been a number of Wildlings in the Far North that worshipped and sacrificed to cold gods, which I assume to be Others. So I think the likeliest explanation is that Craster's mother was one of these worshippers and he is carrying on a tradition.  He himself might not have been given to these cold gods because he's not a product of direct incest.  His father was in the Watch.  But it's possible his mother and other relatives told him what to do if he wanted the Others to leave him and his property alone.

[Rufus Snow]

7 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Me too!

One thing we do know is that there seems to have been a number of Wildlings in the Far North that worshipped and sacrificed to cold gods, which I assume to be Others. So I think the likeliest explanation is that Craster's mother was one of these worshippers and he is carrying on a tradition.  He himself might not have been given to these cold gods because he's not a product of direct incest.  His father was in the Watch.  But it's possible his mother and other relatives told him what to do if he wanted the Others to leave him and his property alone.

That's possible, though his mother is described as being a woman from White Tree - in which case it might be that the 'Cold Gods' (just like the Old Gods, but with added C.... sorryy, back to regular programming....) might actually stretch further south than we previously thought.

It does provide some dramatic tension though that Craster appears to be aligned more with the NW and the Cold Gods than he is with the other wildlings... I guess there might be more to that story than just daddy issues.

The other question which has bugged me, is 'how old is Craster?' He's depicted as an old man, (and described as being 'near the end of life' by the Wiki), but the only data point we have to pin him down is that he has to be younger than the Night's Watch. He clearly has no interest in maintaining his 'line' if he sacrifices all of his sons - unless he believes that their fate is a better one Or did he think he was going to live forever - after all, ice preserves, and he's 'right with the Gods'.

Anyway, the guy's dead now, so he won't be telling us anything. I wonder what happened to all his other wives/daughters? They may still have some lore to pass on, if the mutineers didn't kill them off.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

15 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Do we know that they are? We know they live beyond the Wall, so any activity of them in the North shouldn't be a surprise. They rule the North. As far as them trying to invade the south? What evidence do we have for that yet? Other than maybe them chasing after Crasters last son now.  We know they kill wildlings, and we know they attacked the Night's Watch at the Fist when they were gathered beyond the Wall in numbers. Not really much to go on

The Others don't seem too picky as to who they attack. They also attacked the NW in the very first chapter in AGOT. What's unclear is how one got away and got south of the wall to jibber and froth and have his head lopped off by Ned.

 

20 minutes ago, Rufus Snow said:

Anyway, the guy's dead now, so he won't be telling us anything. I wonder what happened to all his other wives/daughters? They may still have some lore to pass on, if the mutineers didn't kill them off.

One would assume that they came south with the Wildling army and passed though the Wall with the others. I really would like to see a Melisandre/Craster's Wives interaction. That could be informative.

 

As far as what Craster was doing and why? I always felt he had just found a way of self preservation in that arcane situation. He had no real allies and only tolerated outsiders when he needed something or felt he had the advantage over them. He didn't care about his "line" or his daughter-wives except for how he could get what he wanted out of them. He treated them like livestock really; lower than chattel.

[Seaserpent]

19 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Do we know that they are? We know they live beyond the Wall, so any activity of them in the North shouldn't be a surprise. They rule the North. As far as them trying to invade the south? What evidence do we have for that yet? Other than maybe them chasing after Crasters last son now.  We know they kill wildlings, and we know they attacked the Night's Watch at the Fist when they were gathered beyond the Wall in numbers. Not really much to go on

Yes i agree we dont know what they wa, but the baby would be my best guess too. Jon and Sam are the only ones that know this so maybe they can honor the pact again. Maybe its there mechanisme of survival, because they cannot make children by themselfs, so now craster is dead and the baby is on the run they need a new one. My question is what people think what kind of special blood craster has that  not many or nobody else have?

[Lady Barbrey]

58 minutes ago, Seaserpent said:

Yes i agree we dont know what they wa, but the baby would be my best guess too. Jon and Sam are the only ones that know this so maybe they can honor the pact again. Maybe its there mechanisme of survival, because they cannot make children by themselfs, so now craster is dead and the baby is on the run they need a new one. My question is what people think what kind of special blood craster has that  not many or nobody else have?

I'd say, based solely on what we know to date, that he carries a latent gene for necromancy (it's the only power we've seen the Others use up to now) that's tied to the Y chromosome maybe, because the Others don't want the girls.  Necromancy is either an icy type of skinchanging the dead or it's its own thing, and I rather suspect the latter after a convo on another thread.  The incest is a thing, it means something and that has to be breeding in this ability to the sons.

Kind of fun to equate disgusting crude Craster to the mad but mighty Targaryens. 

[AlaskanSandman]

9 hours ago, Seaserpent said:

Yes i agree we dont know what they wa, but the baby would be my best guess too. Jon and Sam are the only ones that know this so maybe they can honor the pact again. Maybe its there mechanisme of survival, because they cannot make children by themselfs, so now craster is dead and the baby is on the run they need a new one. My question is what people think what kind of special blood craster has that  not many or nobody else have?

Well i've done a few threads speculating on this.

First, pinning Bael to likely around the time of Hardhome, and his name being Valyrian. Hardhome likely being sacked like Lorath by Valyria. So Bael would come from this situation some how and possibly be tied to Brandon the Burner and his father.

And or Bael is slightly older, either way, the Wolf's Den was raised supposedly and possibly against Valyrians. 

My main point to show that Valyria had some sort of activity in the North represented by Ygritte and Tormund being kissed by fire. Possible reasons having to do with Valyrian slave trade and no opposing government in the North past the wall. 

So Mance (irregardless of any connection to Jon) and the Starks may have Valyrian in them by way of Bael.

Second. pinning Alysanne to Queenscrown having a child to a Mormont and or Stark (Alleric's son is mothered by a Mormont) via the Bear and the Maiden Fair. Evident through Maege Mormont and her daughter Alysane. 

Thirdly, any actions taken by Bloodraven or whom ever possibly fathered Mance despite their vows, then raised him at the Watch, despite their vows. I suspect the L.C. after Bloodraven to possibly be tied to him by blood, breaking yet another vow. 

So to me, the list of reason's why Mance is special is growing.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

17 hours ago, Seaserpent said:

Yes i agree we dont know what they wa, but the baby would be my best guess too. Jon and Sam are the only ones that know this so maybe they can honor the pact again. Maybe its there mechanisme of survival, because they cannot make children by themselfs, so now craster is dead and the baby is on the run they need a new one. My question is what people think what kind of special blood craster has that  not many or nobody else have?

There may not be anything special about Craster at all, except his willingness to cooperate with the Others. We don't know if the Others have taken other male (or even female) Wildling infants since at this time we have no reports of that, but as the Others tend to kill everyone, a report like that may not be available.

The entire ritual may have to be consensual to work. The infants may have to be willingly sacrificed in order for the child to be taken. We only have the show to point to the fate of these children, but it would fit with what we know. Otherwise, why not just enslave some Wildling women and men and do what Craster was doing and breed your own? There is a deeper pact or significance as to how these offerings are presented to the Others and how they can be accepted.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

3 hours ago, Trefayne said:

There may not be anything special about Craster at all, except his willingness to cooperate with the Others. We don't know if the Others have taken other male (or even female) Wildling infants since at this time we have no reports of that, but as the Others tend to kill everyone, a report like that may not be available.

The entire ritual may have to be consensual to work. The infants may have to be willingly sacrificed in order for the child to be taken. We only have the show to point to the fate of these children, but it would fit with what we know. Otherwise, why not just enslave some Wildling women and men and do what Craster was doing and breed your own? There is a deeper pact or significance as to how these offerings are presented to the Others and how they can be accepted.

I have wondered about the 'blood' and if there is some special connection, that those babies had highborn blood of some sort, I have been looking for the thread that theorizes the identity of Crasters father and there was a highborn connection that tied in with a pact. I'll link if I can find it - may have been on Reddit...

[Seaserpent]

14 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Well i've done a few threads speculating on this.

First, pinning Bael to likely around the time of Hardhome, and his name being Valyrian. Hardhome likely being sacked like Lorath by Valyria. So Bael would come from this situation some how and possibly be tied to Brandon the Burner and his father.

And or Bael is slightly older, either way, the Wolf's Den was raised supposedly and possibly against Valyrians. 

My main point to show that Valyria had some sort of activity in the North represented by Ygritte and Tormund being kissed by fire. Possible reasons having to do with Valyrian slave trade and no opposing government in the North past the wall. 

So Mance (irregardless of any connection to Jon) and the Starks may have Valyrian in them by way of Bael.

Second. pinning Alysanne to Queenscrown having a child to a Mormont and or Stark (Alleric's son is mothered by a Mormont) via the Bear and the Maiden Fair. Evident through Maege Mormont and her daughter Alysane. 

Thirdly, any actions taken by Bloodraven or whom ever possibly fathered Mance despite their vows, then raised him at the Watch, despite their vows. I suspect the L.C. after Bloodraven to possibly be tied to him by blood, breaking yet another vow. 

So to me, the list of reason's why Mance is special is growing.

Your first point is very interesting, because Mance and beal look alot like eachother, the only big diffrence is the kidnapping of the daughter (if you dont count a fake arya) and make her pregnant. So there are some options of Valyrianblood in the north and maybe some old blood of kings. But what are mance and craster from each other? 

[Seaserpent]

23 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I'd say, based solely on what we know to date, that he carries a latent gene for necromancy (it's the only power we've seen the Others use up to now) that's tied to the Y chromosome maybe, because the Others don't want the girls.  Necromancy is either an icy type of skinchanging the dead or it's its own thing, and I rather suspect the latter after a convo on another thread.  The incest is a thing, it means something and that has to be breeding in this ability to the sons.

Kind of fun to equate disgusting crude Craster to the mad but mighty Targaryens. 

Yes i understand that he wants to deliver his Y (necromancy/skinchanging) to his sons and that the WW want this kind of boys. could Craster be a descendend from the Warg King or could the blackwoods for that matter are? Than the skinchanging gen i would understand, but the necromancy, which are the characters who have that gen?? bloodstone emperor or bloodraven or who?

[Lady Barbrey]

1 hour ago, Seaserpent said:

Yes i understand that he wants to deliver his Y (necromancy/skinchanging) to his sons and that the WW want this kind of boys. could Craster be a descendend from the Warg King or could the blackwoods for that matter are? Than the skinchanging gen i would understand, but the necromancy, which are the characters who have that gen?? bloodstone emperor or bloodraven or who?

Nobody that we know of, though a few fire magic people seem to be able to raise a dead person, like Thoros.  There are hints in the World of Ice and Fire that the Dustins, the Kings of the First Men, whom the Starks conquered and married into, called the Corpse Kings and situated at Barrowton (barrows are graves) are perhaps associated with death magic.  The crypts at Winterfell also are a focus point.

Based on that, a tentative scenario is that the Night King's Corpse Bride was an ice magic sorceress who came looking for a particular bloodline to regenerate the Others after their defeat, and found what she needed in the Lord Commander, who was possibly a Stark (I've argued elsewhere he was a Stark bastard and was called Snow, based on Ygritte's reaction to Jon Snow's name as an evil one).  

We have a possible parallel with Dany actually as far as regenesis is concerned. After the Valyrians are wiped out, a few descendants survive as Targs (actual dragon riders), but there's not a heck of a lot of them and they marry out a few times, and suddenly there's no dragon riders left, just latent ability until Dany comes along from a double incest twice, and with the help of Mirri, births dragons.

Something similar could have happened to the Others after their defeat.  The Lord Commander was the 13th so it might have taken that long for the Others to be completely extinct, and to rebirth them took an inbred Stark and an ice sorceress, just as rebirthing the dragon riding lines and dragons themselves took an inbred Targ and a fire sorceress.

So there could be any number of Northmen or Wildlings with that latent bloodline, but it takes incest to make the latent abilities powerful or manifest, so Craster might have the latent bloodline and practiced incest to make it powerful.  The Starks themselves also seemed to interbreed with just a small number of families and within themselves so it could manifest in one of them.  George makes the point of telling us the Wildlings actively avoid incest, and that's likely true of common northerners as well, so the best candidates to have the ability are incest-practitioners like Craster, or in the northern noble families like the Starks, Dustins, Mormonts, etc., that don't have a wide gene pool because restricted to noble birth and thus marry among themselves.

This is my guess on how the Starks and Craster are related to the Others: they carry that gene that gives Others necromancy abilities. But even when the gene is powerful, to actually manifest a new line of necromantic Others took an ice sorceress, just as manifesting a new line of dragon-riding Valyrians took a fire sorceress.

But the whole scenario is based on following a logic line through from disparate hints so it's just a placeholder theory, subject to change as more particulars about the Others crop up.

[Seaserpent]

39 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Nobody that we know of, though a few fire magic people seem to be able to raise a dead person, like Thoros.  There are hints in the World of Ice and Fire that the Dustins, the Kings of the First Men, whom the Starks conquered and married into, called the Corpse Kings and situated at Barrowton (barrows are graves) are perhaps associated with death magic.  The crypts at Winterfell also are a focus point.

Based on that, a tentative scenario is that the Night King's Corpse Bride was an ice magic sorceress who came looking for a particular bloodline to regenerate the Others after their defeat, and found what she needed in the Lord Commander, who was possibly a Stark (I've argued elsewhere he was a Stark bastard and was called Snow, based on Ygritte's reaction to Jon Snow's name as an evil one).  

We have a possible parallel with Dany actually as far as regenesis is concerned. After the Valyrians are wiped out, a few descendants survive as Targs (actual dragon riders), but there's not a heck of a lot of them and they marry out a few times, and suddenly there's no dragon riders left, just latent ability until Dany comes along from a double incest twice, and with the help of Mirri, births dragons.

Something similar could have happened to the Others after their defeat.  The Lord Commander was the 13th so it might have taken that long for the Others to be completely extinct, and to rebirth them took an inbred Stark and an ice sorceress, just as rebirthing the dragon riding lines and dragons themselves took an inbred Targ and a fire sorceress.

So there could be any number of Northmen or Wildlings with that latent bloodline, but it takes incest to make the latent abilities powerful or manifest, so Craster might have the latent bloodline and practiced incest to make it powerful.  The Starks themselves also seemed to interbreed with just a small number of families and within themselves so it could manifest in one of them.  George makes the point of telling us the Wildlings actively avoid incest, and that's likely true of common northerners as well, so the best candidates to have the ability are incest-practitioners like Craster, or in the northern noble families like the Starks, Dustins, Mormonts, etc., that don't have a wide gene pool because restricted to noble birth and thus marry among themselves.

This is my guess on how the Starks and Craster are related to the Others: they carry that gene that gives Others necromancy abilities. But even when the gene is powerful, to actually manifest a new line of necromantic Others took an ice sorceress, just as manifesting a new line of dragon-riding Valyrians took a fire sorceress.

But the whole scenario is based on following a logic line through from disparate hints so it's just a placeholder theory, subject to change as more particulars about the Others crop up.

This theory sounds great and the resembles with the fire side of the story. A house that can also be inbreeding are the flints, they are presented, because they are the only ones that expand their territory to other places. Maybe it is easier this way to intermarry like the lannisters from the rockj and lannisport. (dont know if i am right about that) 

But with this story you also think that the long night happened after the wall was allready there? 

I Think she was an ice scoceres because she her description is that from a Mel look a like, but than ice. The corpse bride could not have been an other, because than intercourse would have been a very bad thing i guess and not have worked. 

Last question do you think is possible that lyanna has a pure bloodline, maybe that the wife of Rickard was a Stark in dis skies. Because than u have Dany who is pure fire, NK pure ice and Jon pure ice and fire? something like this