Stone Fingers and Stone Men: Revenge of the Rhoyne?

[hiemal]

Quote

 "Off to starboard a hand large enough to crush the boat was reaching up from the murky depths. Only the tops of two fingers broke the river's surface, but as the Shy Maid eased on past he could see the rest of the hand rippling below the water and a pale face looking up."

ADwD

Aside from being a prelude to the infamous "Bridge of Dreams" rewind this statue represents another mystery: why is there a giant statue sunken in the middle of a river? Granted the Rhoyne overflowed her banks during the Valyrian invasion and Garin's revenge and may have even shifted course over the last thousand odd years but this would still require that Rhoynish erected this statue on the lowest ground in the area or on a piece of ground that was very locally given to extremely even and level sinkage due to erosion? 

I have an alternate theory, one draped in shiny tinfoil and mystery but still worth mentioning:

That statue -is- the Shrouded Lord- or at least the first, oldest, Stone Man. When his affliction reaches a critical point, a Stone Man plops off of the Bridge of Dreams and into the Rhoyne where, like pearls, they grow and grow over the centuries until at last they become so large that they actually breach the surface. Pretty grotesque, and I have no idea what is going on inside this stony shell- are they considered alive? Perhaps instead of pearls they are more like coral or even some kind calcified tree? What happens to their souls- do they pass on, sleep, or could they perhaps roam about as if their bodies had become glass candles?

I wonder who is most vulnerable to the stone curse? It seems to behave no differently than any other disease outbreak as far as selectivity is concerned. It has crossed my mind that this could be a way of bringing souls of interest back to the Rhoyne, either as a continuation of the revenge started so long away or even as way bringing back her lost children?

Quote

"He and his wife were Greenblood born, a pair of Dornish orphans come home to Mother Rhoyne."

ADwD

The flow of stone men into the Rhoyne to populate the bottom of the Rhoyne seems almost like the lifecycle of some kind of parasite to me. All to bring the living statues back to where the curse began.

Seems like a long shot but it is theory or at least part of one. Thoughts, ideas, alternative explainations?

[Legitimate_Bastard]

20 hours ago, hiemal said:

Aside from being a prelude to the infamous "Bridge of Dreams" rewind this statue represents another mystery: why is there a giant statue sunken in the middle of a river? Granted the Rhoyne overflowed her banks during the Valyrian invasion and Garin's revenge and may have even shifted course over the last thousand odd years but this would still require that Rhoynish erected this statue on the lowest ground in the area or on a piece of ground that was very locally given to extremely even and level sinkage due to erosion? 

I have an alternate theory, one draped in shiny tinfoil and mystery but still worth mentioning:

That statue -is- the Shrouded Lord- or at least the first, oldest, Stone Man. When his affliction reaches a critical point, a Stone Man plops off of the Bridge of Dreams and into the Rhoyne where, like pearls, they grow and grow over the centuries until at last they become so large that they actually breach the surface. Pretty grotesque, and I have no idea what is going on inside this stony shell- are they considered alive? Perhaps instead of pearls they are more like coral or even some kind calcified tree? What happens to their souls- do they pass on, sleep, or could they perhaps roam about as if their bodies had become glass candles?

I wonder who is most vulnerable to the stone curse? It seems to behave no differently than any other disease outbreak as far as selectivity is concerned. It has crossed my mind that this could be a way of bringing souls of interest back to the Rhoyne, either as a continuation of the revenge started so long away or even as way bringing back her lost children?

The flow of stone men into the Rhoyne to populate the bottom of the Rhoyne seems almost like the lifecycle of some kind of parasite to me. All to bring the living statues back to where the curse began.

Seems like a long shot but it is theory or at least part of one. Thoughts, ideas, alternative explainations?

I love this idea. I wondered what was going on with the giant hand and I have never heard or read another potential explanation.

The cyclical nature of your theory/part of a theory would go right along with what seems to be the cyclical nature of the seasons/magic in Westeros.

I also think there is going to be more concerning the Deep Ones, the Shrouded Lord and other water based figures of lore/religion. This could fold in to that somehow.

[Lollygag]

This part is going to be rather dull, but I always took that statue for one which fell over in the war, broke and that part ended up in the river to serve symbolic and foreshadowing purposes in the story. There are disaster movies where the Statue of Liberty is broken and in the water and this statue made me think of that. Actually, the stonemen are Statues of Liberty so to speak for the Rhoyne people except it went too far to the extreme and bit them on the keister.

But I do think the stone statue may serve another purpose. I think that the stonemen go back much, much further than was revealed. I wonder if it's a hint as to that mysterious history. Statues can be warnings, displays of power and intimidation. Perhaps this was one?

21 hours ago, hiemal said:

Pretty grotesque, and I have no idea what is going on inside this stony shell- are they considered alive? Perhaps instead of pearls they are more like coral or even some kind calcified tree? What happens to their souls- do they pass on, sleep, or could they perhaps roam about as if their bodies had become glass candles?

ADWD Tyrion V

"This is no common fog, Hugor Hill," Ysilla insisted. "It stinks of sorcery, as you would know if you had a nose to smell it. Many a voyager has been lost here, poleboats and pirates and great river galleys too. They wander forlorn through the mists, searching for a sun they cannot find until madness or hunger claim their lives. There are restless spirits in the air here and tormented souls below the water."

…

"Hatred does not stir the stone men half so much as hunger."

They sound tortured, in hell. I don't think it's hunger which moves them, but thirst. The wights, undying, and stonemen all have veins of similarity and just one of them is extreme dehydration and dark. The Rhoyne didn't flood until that very night. Skin turns ashy, hard, grayish, and cracks when severely dehydrated. All three seem to have a thing with open mouths, breath and throats. All have an aversion to fire which would make sense if they were so dehydrated. Jon notes that the wights remember which implies that they may retain some part of themselves. The Undying struck me from my first read as enslaved. Just my impression, but it seems like the warlocks were keeping the Undying like trapped animals. Enslaved fits the stonemen, too. 

 

We saw fire enslave with the height of the Valyrians. Water/Ice may enslave by withholding water. These magical slavers would make Dany's conflict with slavery very relevant. Perhaps she's not to defeat them but free them instead.

Braavos is one place which the Valyrians have left alone. It's also watery, cold and damp. I've wondering if there were things in the water there but I've not done any digging or rereading on that yet.

 

 

 

[hiemal]

2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

This part is going to be rather dull, but I always took that statue for one which fell over in the war, broke and that part ended up in the river to serve symbolic and foreshadowing purposes in the story. There are disaster movies where the Statue of Liberty is broken and in the water and this statue made me think of that. Actually, the stonemen are Statues of Liberty so to speak for the Rhoyne people except it went too far to the extreme and bit them on the keister.

It seems improbably perfectly placed to be the result of an accident, but improbable is far from impossible in ASoIaF.

2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Th

But I do think the stone statue may serve another purpose. I think that the stonemen go back much, much further than was revealed. I wonder if it's a hint as to that mysterious history. Statues can be warnings, displays of power and intimidation. Perhaps this was one?

ADWD Tyrion V

"This is no common fog, Hugor Hill," Ysilla insisted. "It stinks of sorcery, as you would know if you had a nose to smell it. Many a voyager has been lost here, poleboats and pirates and great river galleys too. They wander forlorn through the mists, searching for a sun they cannot find until madness or hunger claim their lives. There are restless spirits in the air here and tormented souls below the water."

…

"Hatred does not stir the stone men half so much as hunger."

They sound tortured, in hell. I don't think it's hunger which moves them, but thirst. The wights, undying, and stonemen all have veins of similarity and just one of them is extreme dehydration and dark. The Rhoyne didn't flood until that very night. Skin turns ashy, hard, grayish, and cracks when severely dehydrated. All three seem to have a thing with open mouths, breath and throats. All have an aversion to fire which would make sense if they were so dehydrated. Jon notes that the wights remember which implies that they may retain some part of themselves. The Undying struck me from my first read as enslaved. Just my impression, but it seems like the warlocks were keeping the Undying like trapped animals. Enslaved fits the stonemen, too. 

 

That's an interesting line of thought. Perhaps the stone men go as far as back as the Long Night? It always puzzled me that the Rhoynish should have a mythos on the subject as I'm pretty sure they weren't around at that time- I'm not sure what the Rhoyne even would have been like at that time because the drying of the Silver Sea seems like it may have triggered the migration of the Fisher Queens into a more riparian lifestyle.

2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

We saw fire enslave with the height of the Valyrians. Water/Ice may enslave by withholding water. These magical slavers would make Dany's conflict with slavery very relevant. Perhaps she's not to defeat them but free them instead.

Braavos is one place which the Valyrians have left alone. It's also watery, cold and damp. I've wondering if there were things in the water there but I've not done any digging or rereading on that yet.

Arya describes it as teeming with fish, mollusks, and crustaceans so it seems to more healthful that stretch of the Rhoyne, although there is a description of a section of the town that is sinking, forcing those too poor toe live elsewhere to live in what those upper portions that are still dry.

[hiemal]

3 hours ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

I love this idea. I wondered what was going on with the giant hand and I have never heard or read another potential explanation.

The cyclical nature of your theory/part of a theory would go right along with what seems to be the cyclical nature of the seasons/magic in Westeros.

I also think there is going to be more concerning the Deep Ones, the Shrouded Lord and other water based figures of lore/religion. This could fold in to that somehow.

I am also curious about the Merling King- he is primarily associated with the sea, but he is the sigil of House Manderly, who moved from pretty far up the Mander to the mouth of the White Knife. And, most locally, the Turtle and Crab Kings, who I think represent the same river/ocean tension.

[hiemal]

Another theory as to the sunken statues that just came to me is that perhaps they were sunken deliberately as an act of worship in the same way that the Nazca lines were painted for the "enjoyment" of celestial deities.

My main issue with this, and with any other idea, actually is erosion- how long would a statue submerged in flowing water retain its shape before it eroded down to nothing? We obviously don't know what material the statue is made of but I feel like a thousand years would probably have more of an impact than we seem to observing.

[Lady Barbrey]

I'm still hung up on leeching!  And the life sacrifice/magic trade off.  Garin called down the waters but he was hung upside down in a cage.  He sacrificed nothing for that great act of magic.  Lots of people died in the flooding but that was the effect of the flood and came after the fact.  Because Garin used water magic, magic itself needs water plus life force to replenish itself and it is taking it from flesh, petrifying it. Greyscale will continue as a virus until the life-potency debt is paid.

I loved your image of stone men gathering accretion in the water and growing larger, like a speck of sand accruing layers to form a pearl.  I think it's a jump but you sure have a great imagination!  I prefer your speculation to Lollygag's @Lollygagthough I myself thought the same as she did, that it was foreshadowing.  But I think the Statue of Liberty thing from Planet of the Apes is an extremely astute guess on her part and probably right on the money.  We certainly get a sense that Westeros history is cyclical.  In Planet of the Apes the man's future meets his past when he sees the Statue of Liberty. Right after Tyrion and co see the statue, time seems to slip into a cycle.  So there is a definite connection here.

This is one area I see time looping.  In another area, when Sam's in Oldtown, time seems to split.  It's all very odd.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I think Greyscale/Grey Plague/Grey death/greywater fever is a biological weapon that weirwood uses against its enemies.  I think the Storm God (weirwood) used it against the Grey King and that is what turned him grey.

 

"planned his wars against the Storm God . . ."

"From there he ruled the Iron Islands for a thousand years, until his very skin had turned as grey as his hair and beard.  Only then did he cast aside his driftwood crown and walk into the sea, descending to the Drowned God's watery halls to take his rightful place at his right hand . . ."

"The Storm God drowned Nagga's fire after the Grey King's death . . ."

He warred against the Storm God for a 1000 years, and the Storm God won, at least in part by infecting him with the Grey Death.  After his death, the Storm God destroyed the civilization he had built.

(other biological weapons: "The butterfly spirits sacred to their Lord of Harmony protected their isle against those who would do them harm. Many conquerors had sailed on Naath to blood their swords, only to sicken and die" " The god of Naath is called the Lord of Harmony, oft shown as a laughing giant "  The Summer Isles are a vision of what the weirwoods/human symbiosis was or could be, whereas in Westeros they have tormented the trees so the trees have turned against humans, and feed on them, and the butterflies have become the harpies)

 

 

The Shrouded Lord is just another variation of the god of death, which is the weirwood. 

"Him of Many Faces."

"And many names," the kindly man had said. "In Qohor he is the Black Goat, in Yi Ti the Lion of Night, in Westeros the Stranger. All men must bow to him in the end, no matter if they worship the Seven or the Lord of Light, the Moon Mother or the Drowned God or the Great Shepherd. All mankind belongs to him . . . else somewhere in the world would be a folk who lived forever. Do you know of any folk who live forever?"

"No," she would answer. "All men must die."

 

"the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes.

"The Stranger's altar was shrouded in shadow"

One of the cosmic Gods of the Seven from Lonely Songs on Laren Dorr who torment Laren and hunt Sharra is a hooded figure:

Quote

The sky was very dark, but she could see clearly, for against the darkness a shape was moving. Light poured from it, and the dirt in the courtyard and the stones of the battlements and the gray pennants were all bright beneath its glow. Puzzling, Sharra looked up.

Something looked back. It was taller than the mountains and it filled up half the sky, and though it gave off light enough to see the castle by, Sharra knew that it was dark beyond darkness. It had a man-shape, roughly, and it wore a long cape and a cowl, and below that was blackness even fouler than the rest. The only sounds were Laren’s soft breathing and the beating of her heart and the distant weeping of a mourning-bird, but in her head Sharra could hear demonic laughter.

"god had but seven faces...but the Drowned God was one of those, as an aspect of the Stranger."

"Your Drowned God is a demon," the black priest Moqorro said afterward. "He is no more than a thrall of the Other, the dark god whose name must not be spoken."

"The dark god of Qohor, the deity known as the Black Goat, demands daily blood sacrifice. Calves, bullocks, and horses are the animals most often brought before the Black Goat's altars, but on holy days condemned criminals go beneath the knives of his cowled priests, and in times of danger and crisis it is written that the high nobles of the city offer up their own children to placate the god, that he might defend the city."

Boash whose priests "wore eyeless hoods in honor of their god, as they believed that only in darkness their third eye would open"

"And what about the weirwood with his brother's face, that smelled of death and darkness?"

" the hard pale wood of Ygg, a demon tree who fed on human flesh."

" In their midst was a pale stranger; a slender young weirwood"

And many death customs involve wrapping the body in a shroud.  And the story of the Hooded King Morgon Banefort who was a necromancer and had a twenty year war with the Lannisters, sounds like a garbled version of the Long Night.

 

 

There are some parallels between the stone men and others/wights,

""The whispering dead hate the warm and quick and ever seek for more damned souls to join them. . . Hatred does not stir the stone men half so much as hunger."

" The Shrouded Lord has ruled these mists since Garin's day"

"Make no vainglorious boasts, I beg you. Pride is a grievous sin. The stone men were proud as well, and the Shrouded Lord was proudest of them all."

" A thick fog full of evil humors fell, and the Valyrian conquerors began to die of greyscale."

 

Old Nan says about the Others:

"They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins."

"Old Nan's stories, the tale of Night's King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. "And that was the fault in him," she would add, "for all men must know fear."

Tormund says "A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up … how do you fight a mist, crow?

"the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated"

 

Jon dreams that his father was a wight:

"Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the twisted thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again … and this time the burning corpse wore Lord Eddard's features. It was his father's skin that burst and blackened, his father's eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like jellied tears. Jon did not understand why that should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say. "

 

Tyrion dreams that his father is the Shrouded Lord:

" He dreamt of his lord father and the Shrouded Lord. He dreamt that they were one and the same, and when his father wrapped stone arms around him and bent to give him his grey kiss,

 

The Shykes of the Grey Waste sound like a combination of Stone men and Others:

"Whispers reach us of the Grey Waste and its cannibal sands, and of the Shrykes who live there, half-human creatures with greenscaled skin and venomous bites. Are these truly lizard-men, or (more likely) men clad in the skins of lizards? Or are they no more than fables, the grumkins and snarks of the eastern deserts? And even the Shrykes supposedly live in terror of K'dath in the Grey Waste, a city said to be older than time, where unspeakable rites are performed to slake the hunger of mad gods"

Shrikes are birds that impale their prey on trees, and one kind of Shrike looks like a crow.  (stone crows?)

" She knew their call well enough, from her years at Winterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood was white and still."

 

 

 

The part about the giant stone hand reaching up from the water seems like foreshadowing of when the weirwood wake up during the Long Night, weirwoods are stone giants:

" and at the center the heart tree standing like some pale giant frozen in time."

" The heart tree stood before him, a pale giant with a carved face and leaves like bloody hands."

"small wooded islands that punched up through the ice like the frozen fists of some drowned giant. From one such island rose a weirwood gnarled and ancient,

"The Titan of Braavos. Old Nan had told them stories of the Titan back in Winterfell. He was a giant as tall as a mountain, and whenever Braavos stood in danger he would wake with fire in his eyes, his rocky limbs grinding and groaning as he waded out into the sea to smash the enemies. "The Braavosi feed him on the juicy pink flesh of little highborn girls,"

" And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth " (I also think the Red Comet is the real horn of winter, it is horn-shaped and it is the Sword that Slays the Season)

" a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth"

[hiemal]

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I'm still hung up on leeching!  And the life sacrifice/magic trade off.  Garin called down the waters but he was hung upside down in a cage.  He sacrificed nothing for that great act of magic.  Lots of people died in the flooding but that was the effect of the flood and came after the fact.  Because Garin used water magic, magic itself needs water plus life force to replenish itself and it is taking it from flesh, petrifying it. Greyscale will continue as a virus until the life-potency debt is paid. 

I suspect that Garin's Curse was not "cast" by Garin, but on him- he was the sacrifice, the first Stone Man and possibly the Shrouded Lord/grasping statue. This was a manifestation of divine magic cast by Mother Rhoyne in answer to prayer, not sorcery.

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:



I loved your image of stone men gathering accretion in the water and growing larger, like a speck of sand accruing layers to form a pearl.  I think it's a jump but you sure have a great imagination!  I prefer your speculation to Lollygag's @Lollygagthough I myself thought the same as she did, that it was foreshadowing.  But I think the Statue of Liberty thing from Planet of the Apes is an extremely astute guess on her part and probably right on the money.  We certainly get a sense that Westeros history is cyclical.  In Planet of the Apes the man's future meets his past when he sees the Statue of Liberty. Right after Tyrion and co see the statue, time seems to slip into a cycle.  So there is a definite connection here.

This is one area I see time looping.  In another area, when Sam's in Oldtown, time seems to split.  It's all very odd.

I've been wondering if Arya's time in Braavos might also be an example. From some of her descriptions it sounds like she'd been Braavos than the narrative implies elsewhere.

Quote

"Pynto is a very good man," he announced, then settled down to tell her of the time he seized the spice ship, a tale she had heard a dozen times before."

ADwD

Arya said she spaces out her visit to any one pub so to have the same story so many times makes me wonder. Is he telling the same story to the same girl multiple time on the same night? Even if Arya is exaggerating the number it does feel a bit off to me.

[hiemal]

6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think Greyscale/Grey Plague/Grey death/greywater fever is a biological weapon that weirwood uses against its enemies.  I think the Storm God (weirwood) used it against the Grey King and that is what turned him grey.

Which enemies? If there is a methodology to the spread of greyscale it has not been hinted at- it seems to strike at random, old and young, First Men and andals and even the blood of Valyria. I've speculated that it could be a matter of re-incarnated souls but I've got nothing to back that up with really.

It also seems, to me, more likely that the lack of weirwoods in Essos couple with the grey moss that covers the area suggest they would the targets, not the originators of greyscale.

6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

The Shrouded Lord is just another variation of the god of death, which is the weirwood.

The weirwood is the cycle of life and death, not just death and the Shrouded Lord "death-in-life". Both seem to be more complicated than just death.

6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

The Shykes of the Grey Waste sound like a combination of Stone men and Others:

I suspect that the Shrykes are the mutant remnants of the reptilian race that once ruled Sothoryos left behind after the catastrophe of K'dath although whether these were slaves or part of an invading army I have no idea.

6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

The part about the giant stone hand reaching up from the water seems like foreshadowing of when the weirwood wake up during the Long Night, weirwoods are stone giants:

" a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth"

That is an interesting idea, but I feel that "giants in the earth" probably relates to the Children's ability to cause earthquakes.

[Curled Finger]

Ah @hiemal--well told.   Very creepy.