Theories on Magic in Westeros

[The Mother of The Others]

On 10/22/2018 at 9:34 PM, Silver Bullet 1985 said:

The Starks will do as Craster did.  Give offerings to the Others in order to buy their safety and take control of the north.  I believe fire will stop them to save the living.  Jon is coming back as an ice wight.

That would be, you know, jarring.   In the sense that there'd be no way for 58% of readers to buy in to that final battle emotionally.  It would fall flat for me like a big brick thud of WHAT? .....whatever happened with that plotline would then be "fine" cuz I can't make myself care about that showdown.   Plus, you think Jon and DeeNairiss are going to play out their fate- assigned roles in that scenario?  They're more diva than that.  The books have Boltons for that kind of leadership.  Why the hell has the north kept Boltons around, by the way?   To parlay with the Others probably.  To sew somebody inside an Other Skin Suit (OSS) when the time comes.

 

Speaking of emotional divas,

 

Thoros performed an EMO RESURRECTION.   

That's what's spurred on the miracle.  Cuz wasn't he breaking down at the moment, wishing with everything he had that Beric hadn't died on him.  Sending out his strongest feels as he performed the burial ritual.  Twas Wish Magic.   "I don't want to live in a world without Denzel Washington."   Then he rises.   Sure those other things may have been present too: the nearness of High Heart's ambient energy, Dondarrion's ancestry of awakened blood or designer dna, and that burial ritual may originally have been put in place as a form of magic CPR to catch souls like this who qualified to be raised for whatever reason.  But first on the list is Emo Thoros.

  That's what actually fired up the miracle engine.   Spellcasting through absolute desire.   In that moment, Thoros had a Totally Congruent Mind.  (TCM)  and it told the universe what to frickin do.  And the universe complied.  Because something's listening.  Not a god.   A moldable energy field.   By the worthy.  Willpower casting.   He told the long dormant spell to work.

[Oh, and he DID pay a high price for that casting.  It Sobered him.  (Yikez!)  And he had to start believing in his religion after that, which is a lot of work.]

Lastly, it's tough to have a TCM when you're in an OSS.

[hiemal]

11 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Broken grail- by way of Davinci's Code, or TS Eliot and Jesse Weston? It is kind of a defining feature - a lot of fantasy, especially gothic, uses it.  I wonder if it has more significance.  Googling......

Just riffing on Arthurian myth in general and how GRRM might have subverted and inserted it into the Song. I don't want to wander far into the weeds, but I think the swords/grails thing is tied up in issue of magic overall, or at least with the Lightbringer incident and its historic fallout.

If LB is the anti-excalibur then there should be an unholy grail in the mix. We have the Persival/Florian thing going on, the ancient Fisher Queens...

But is it pointing to something important or is GRRM just dangling more red herrings in front of us?

 

[hiemal]

11 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

The thing about the dragon transfer is that Targs, who don't have dragons, seem like they crawl out of their skins wanting that bond.  Dragons died out.  These crazy Targs who want them as almost a part of their own body would very likely have bonded one if an egg had been around.  Others it's no big deal, the bond was gone anyway.  Aerys I'm almost convinced was meant to bond a dragon, but wouldn't sacrifice Rhaegar st Summerhal so lived a life of increasing insanity instead.

They apparently put eggs in their nurseries and occasionally produce miscarried monstrosities- there is definitely something going on with Targs and souls. Dany ponders Drogo on a fiery steed in the Nightlands and then rides Drogon as a fiery steed. Rhaegal was to be the stallion that mounted world and rhaegal's destiny could well be to grow up and F*&k the world... It seems like souls are definitely involved here.

A human soul could explain their uncanny intelligence or it could be that the body itself simply controls how much awareness a soul can make use of. Put soul in a bug and one in a dog and you have different possibilites?

The CotF were said to use bats as messengers before they used ravens. The ravens were said to be capable of actual speech at one time to the point of being able to verbally deliver messages. Is this due to the ravens innate mimicry abilities and relatively high intelligence or is there something else at work? I've wondered if ravens might be playing the role of psychopomp as well as messenger because of the andal legend of the Crone releasing ravens to the world when peered through death's door. Not sure when the CotF switched from bats to ravens but could it when the Andals came? The colonies of bats around Harrenhall and the Isle of Faces make me think that they have been still using bats at that point.

Anyways, bringing it back around, if ravens/bats do play such a role in the OG's system maybe dragonriding requires a two-pronged approach, one side some kind of modified skinchanging/greenseer ability and on the other a special kind of soul insertion (similar to how the Others are created?) into an elementally-infused body...

[The Mother of The Others]

On 10/22/2018 at 10:45 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

Dragons probably have too much force of will to be skinchanged. So instead the Children transformed a member of their special little mutable family with dragon fire magic, so that the dragons would recognize him as kin and allow a bond to form

Uhhhhhhhhhhh, so.....okay.  the last hero came to them, they helped by forging Fire blood buddies to help his Ice blood take down the Ice Demons.  Together, super- bloodlines got the job done... and then they totally banged and produced Nephilim babies or things went horribly wrong somehow.  Either way, it explains why no more heroes were needed or wanted after the Last Hero.   Then, I can see everyone agreeing that Ice & Fire were too potent a combo to stay together, so the Children magically delusted / decoupled the Ice and Fire bloodlines and told the Targs to leave and they made a pact to never come back, so worried were the Children and so nutty was the danger , including the possibility of more exploding magic nukes like what happened near Hardhome for whatever reason (Inter- Elemental Fission Friction, or I.E.F.F)

Then some Targs broke the pact and came back just to save their pansy asses from Valyrian implosion.  (Did Aegon suspect the Children had struck Valyria down, voiding the pact on their end??)   Then a Targ took over as greenseer general of the weirs, which seems really ominous in light of the wise former policy of distancing the elements on separate continents!  Now there's a coup of sorts under the roots??  I don't think this website has paid enough attention to that little detail.  It's almost as if BloodRaven is courting the kind of massive trouble that would justify Melisandre thinking him an agent of the devil.   

Then..... Ice and Fire bloodlines finally re- boinked and hooked up their magic potency and Jon popped out.   (....leans back, steeples fingers, and says in Montgomery Burns voice, "Yessssss.")     Then.....after the pact was broken with full on sex between Ice and Fire people..... that's when the Others decided the treaty was broken and it was time to go apeshit and bring down the Wall?!?!   Or are we supposed to believe Reagar timed his impregnation of Lyanna so the baby would come of age just as the Long Winter took hold?   Both these options seem powerfully unlikely, if we're being Frank.  ...Then, dragons got rebooted too because Fire heard there was a party to go to and if the dragons could talk they'd join the rest of us who've been telling Stormborn to get her slow buttocks across the narrow sea already so she can meet this Snow hottie on the other continent and combine their elements real hard when she gets repeatedly basement- impaled by Jon's sword of low hanging heat quenching delight (i.e. light- bringer, because he's so pale it shines in the dark).   Sounds about right.  This is currently our best understanding of things, yes?

[Lady Barbrey]

11 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

What if 100,000 people named you queen, though.  What about all their spirit, their will, now bound up with your own?   Even as a non- Targ mudblood royal, being the central figure of a society would make you a bright star in the realm of power physics where magic lives and breathes.  Magic would jealously sense royals as competition, as both deal in the same currency of Influence and power over the world of Man.   As your loyal subjects bent all their thoughts in your direction, magic would perceive you as a local black hole bending lines of gravity all around it.  The sacrificial value of your blood would skyrocket like good real estate.  Like how the power of prayer boosts as more creepy monks in flowing robes join in.   Or like how gods get stronger as they gain more worshippers.-- reliable source: dungeons &  

Well get me the hell out of dodge.  I guess groupy type people exist, that see power in Elvis' rollerblades.  Sacrifice them, not me, okay?

[Lady Barbrey]

10 hours ago, Springwatch said:

Alternatively, the 'gods'  could interest themselves, invest themselves in kings and queens. It would fit with the theme of mummers and puppeteers, like Tyrion feeling he's dancing on someone's strings.

Yeah, and I like that reference a lot.  I'm not trying to shut down that human behaviour is being shaped by the gods, if they exist, or they're not playing some  cosmic game because I certainly get the sense they're doing just that.  Joffrey cutting off Ned's head  could have been inspired by a total Loki figure  to throw everything into chaos, for instance, though George is careful to make sure that could as easily be Joff. Jon acts out of character (yes I know his reasons but it still seemed out of character) with his sudden decision to keep Gilly's baby at the Wall, like someone or something other was directing that scheme, so I'm expecting cosmic pay-off..

My contention still would be it isn't the title of the players but particular family members from an eons old family, power-infused with incest, blessed and cursed in equal measure, but key players for the Gods to perform their cosmic play. In effect, like most heroes of yore, demigods. And that's what skinchangers, Others, Valyrians are - changed by the gods with godlike powers.  Demigods.

But that's just one religion. 

Because if the gods exist, I think they're investing as much in Davos the Onion Knight as in Dany the Dragon Queen.  Maybe that's why the Mother speaks to Davos.  The Seven are our closest religion to Christianity, and its heroes and demi-gods tend to be the faithful, shepherds and fishermen as well as princes and kings. 

So I still am mostly convinced that sacrificial power does not reside in the title of the king but in the bloodline of a long-dead demi-god king, Huzhor Amai possibly.  But that's for sacrifice.  There seem to be other cosmic players of the Seven variety who are making their own independent choices for their chosen ones. 

 

[chrisdaw]

The text most closely touches on the topic of how magic works here.

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"Call it dragonglass." Archmaester Marwyn glanced at the candle for a moment. "It burns but is not consumed."

"What feeds the flame?" asked Sam.

"What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles. Do you think that might be useful, Slayer?"

What is basically said here is that the glass candles are fuelled the same way a dragon's fire is. And the closest to an answer we get is blood or fire. Blood means sacrifice, death.

The AA/Lightbringer story provides somewhat of a process for a blood sacrifice leading to magic. Lightbringer is again something that burns seemingly without consuming anything.

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"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

The story straight up tells us that Lightbringer is a second lifed sword.

It is all one and the same. The answer to what fuels the glass candle, a dragon's fire and any Lightbringer is a soul or souls. A person dies, their soul enters the thing, their soul then magically powers it and it has magical properties. It is a second lifing just like is demonstrated first hand with Varamyr. The persistence without consumption of anything physical is because the things is feeding on the soul(s) within.

Valyrian steel doesn't (necessarily) burn but it persists. In the case of a blade its edge persists. It is the same deal, a soul is being consumed rather than the steel of the blade's edge being ground down. But as there's no fire it might not actually be consumed, it may just persist forever.

Magic doesn't necessarily need a system, GRRM can have whatever he wants happen and just call it magic. The reason to make rules and a system is so that there can be themes and characters can understand the consequences of an action. The end game is to make real Stannis' dilemma, is one bastard child worth the realm? Without magic such a scenario is impossible, with magic it can (and in ASOIAF will) become a real choice characters will have to make.

[The Mother of The Others]

9 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

2) As has been mentioned, Jon and Ghost's warging connection is broken when they are separated by the Wall. Why is this? Why is theirs broken when Bran seems to be able to connect to weirwoods out of network? He doesn't seem to be out of service

ROOTS of weirwoods extend under the Wall?   Telephone line style.  I halfway remember there being an official answer to this question, and this....might... be it.

Here's a callback to earlier in the topic:   Weirs turn to stone, and someone is destined to wake a dragon from stone.   So, you'd think it'd take a "dragon" to melt the wall with its fire... but if the Wall includes Ice & Fire magic both, it may be proof against even Drogon possessed by an Other, etc.  ...But what if the weirwood roots under the wall were what lurched to life like a treant and caused an earthquake upheaval that brought that whole section of the wall crashing down broken at last.

[Lady Rhodes]

33 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

ROOTS of weirwoods extend under the Wall?   Telephone line style.  I halfway remember there being an official answer to this question, and this....might... be it.

Here's a callback to earlier in the topic:   Weirs turn to stone, and someone is destined to wake a dragon from stone.   So, you'd think it'd take a "dragon" to melt the wall with its fire... but if the Wall includes Ice & Fire magic both, it may be proof against even Drogon possessed by an Other, etc.  ...But what if the weirwood roots under the wall were what lurched to life like a treant and caused an earthquake upheaval that brought that whole section of the wall crashing down broken at last.

Very interesting!

 

41 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

The text most closely touches on the topic of how magic works here.

What is basically said here is that the glass candles are fuelled the same way a dragon's fire is. And the closest to an answer we get is blood or fire. Blood means sacrifice, death.

The AA/Lightbringer story provides somewhat of a process for a blood sacrifice leading to magic. Lightbringer is again something that burns seemingly without consuming anything.

The story straight up tells us that Lightbringer is a second lifed sword.

It is all one and the same. The answer to what fuels the glass candle, a dragon's fire and any Lightbringer is a soul or souls. A person dies, their soul enters the thing, their soul then magically powers it and it has magical properties. It is a second lifing just like is demonstrated first hand with Varamyr. The persistence without consumption of anything physical is because the things is feeding on the soul(s) within.

Valyrian steel doesn't (necessarily) burn but it persists. In the case of a blade its edge persists. It is the same deal, a soul is being consumed rather than the steel of the blade's edge being ground down. But as there's no fire it might not actually be consumed, it may just persist forever.

Magic doesn't necessarily need a system, GRRM can have whatever he wants happen and just call it magic. The reason to make rules and a system is so that there can be themes and characters can understand the consequences of an action. The end game is to make real Stannis' dilemma, is one bastard child worth the realm? Without magic such a scenario is impossible, with magic it can (and in ASOIAF will) become a real choice characters will have to make.

I like this

[Lady Barbrey]

On 10/23/2018 at 1:34 PM, hiemal said:

I could see that going either way, but I'm inclined to think that the Others are their own thing and that their shape is somehow imposed on them by outside forces so that they currently come in at least two varieties, the White Walkers and Ice Dragons.

Alternately, I have speculated that CotF, the Mazemakers, the Lengii, the merlings, the giants, and possibly the Naathi and the brindled men are all members or descendants of one very morphologically mutable race that can change quickly to adapt to any environment. The Others could be an extreme example?

Dragons are creatures of a different order. I don't they can be skinchanged by someone in OGs soul cycle because the souls go into a dragon are part of the Firenet. So, for example, Aerion Brightflame might indeed have become a dragon when he had his nightcap, just not in the way he imagined. Or if dragons have a human soul, it may that it is like warging a human, something only a greenseer can do?

 

Not so sure of the two varieties, ie, ice dragons, so let's hold that for later.

Well in my 'mirror of Westeros' theory, which is holding its own as far as Yi Ti is concerned, the Lengi are likely the Yi Tish version of the Children. In fact, well before the show, years ago now, I speculated that the Lengi queens 'marriages' to two husbands, one to control her navy, the other to control her army, meant that the Children had formed two races, one ocean-based to control or prevent the original mariners arriving, the other land-based to control arrival by land to Westeros.  Merlings and skinchangers. We've little evidence of merlings though enough hints something's in the water, but lots for skinchangers.  This 'marriage'does not have to mean a literal marriage, of course, but some kind of transformation.

But since First Men were already in Westeros and seemingly adapting, it's curious, as Yandel remarks, that the Children, with or without First Men assistance, then exploded the Arm of Dorne. Its closest correlation to real life myth I can think of is Moses parting the Red Sea.  The Children were "saving" their people but destroying the "Other" people, thei enslavers or tyrants of First Men. 

So why might they do this:

1) I like the idea above about severing the weir network between continents, as if the Children did not want something to poison it, as perhaps it was poisoned when they lived there.

2) I similarly, if we subscribe to your networks theory, think the type of people that started arriving were not wanted. Westeros has its faults, but it's a continent of immigrants, possibly also fleeing the kind of slavery endemic to Essos and it's conquerors. Nymeria is a good example and reminder of an exodus from tyranny and slavery.  So is Braavos.  It's a possible reason slavery as an institution never really took hold in Westeros, though milder systems of serfdom and thralldom, did, because most of the FM were escaping from it.

3) Also, without wanting to go down the BSE rabbit hole too far, the island closest to Essos after the Arm is broken, is called Bloodstone, suggesting an invading army with BSE tendencies crossing after slaves, being obliterated by stone and water, and all that's left to mark who or what they were is that last outpost before the flood, Bloodstone Island.

My instinct, therefore, tells me that the slavers of Essos started arriving on Westeros with antithetical gods and antithetical purpose, possibly part of an antithetical "fire network" that meant certain death to the old gods, the Children and the First Men converts. And so Moses severed the Arm.

I like this idea too because it ties into my first family idea of many with purple eyes, fleeing the slavery of the Bloodstone Emperor.  What colour do Braavos use in their sails?  In-story we're given a reason for it, but George to my mind coloured them purple because purple was the colour of the kings that led the exodus from Essos out of slavery to Westeros.

It echoes in our two known chosen ones as well, this idea of leading a people to safety, and abolishing slavery.  Jon with the Wildlings, Dany with the people of Slavers Bay.  It's completely against their best self-interest to do either of these things, in one case leading to Jon's death, in the other to Dany's revolts.  It's almost as if some archaic archetype of behaviour from antiquity, a driving force from a common ancestor, dictates these instincts. And I'd pull it not from the Targs but from the other side of the family, which both have in spades, Blackwoods and Starks.

I'll leave this alone now, but I did want to point out a few other associations in-text to do with the colour purple.  Bloodstone, as LML pointed out, is also called heliotrope, and heliotrope in the natural plant variety, is purple.  Amethyst is purple.  Heliotrope means "sunfacing" (but BSE turns to a black rock instead).   The woman with the monkey's tail in Yi Ti that ended the Long Night (they still wear monkey's tails in their hats to commemorate her) on a par with Azor Ahai and the rest, was a curiosity, until I discovered another name for heliotrope is 'monkey's tail'.

Purple is for kings. Purple is a mix of red (fire) and blue (ice). Purple is for Daynes. Purple is for "sun-facers". Purple is for slave escape. Purple is for exodus. Purple is for the hero or heroine that ends the Long Night-the Last Hero man or woman with the monkey's tail.

We can say purple is for Valyrians too, but I think that just marks them as descendents from the proto-Daynes. There is a plant called red Valeria more appropriate -aside from their eye color, Targaryens are fire and blood - red.

 

[The Mother of The Others]

6 hours ago, hiemal said:

The ravens were said to be capable of actual speech at one time to the point of being able to verbally deliver messages. Is this due to the ravens innate mimicry abilities and relatively high intelligence or is there something else at work? 

Dude.   The talkative ravens bore the transferred souls of freshly dead CotF.   They still remembered their lives as bipeds and the switch from bats was to give them the vocal chords for speech and community service.   Then, with no CotF dying anymore,  the ravens' souls grew dulled from so many animal reincarnations , so they gotted less good with the talkie talk mindfulness of late.  They still congregate at the Blackwood tree and what have you but they're not college prep ravens anymore, just regular general education track.

[hiemal]

3 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Dude.   The talkative ravens bore the transferred souls of freshly dead CotF.  

 Even skinchangers in their second lives hang on to only shreds of their humanity and that only for a while. The Child that Bran enountered seemed to me like an echo. I'm also not sure that freshly dead matters- time and guest right don't mean what they used to.

6 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

 They still remembered their lives as bipeds and the switch from bats was to give them the vocal chords for speech and community service.  

Possible. If ravens are not native to Westeros.

8 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

 Then, with no CotF dying anymore,  the ravens' souls grew dulled from so many animal reincarnations , so they gotted less good with the talkie talk mindfulness of late.

It doesn't even take one reincarnation to dull the soul. I think losing themselves in their companions is a real risk of skinchanging. I think it takes something extraordinary to retain anything if that is what is going on.

It could be that no simply knows how to train them properly anymore or require some special magic on the part of the recipient or it could just be misremembered

13 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

They still congregate at the Blackwood tree and what have you but they're not college prep ravens anymore, just regular general education track.

Well, ravens in general if I catch your drift, but I wouldn't put money on those being regular as they are probably Bloodraven's thousand eyes.

The white ravens at the citadel and Mormont's raven spring to mind as possible exceptions as well.

[hiemal]

43 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Not so sure of the two varieties, ie, ice dragons, so let's hold that for later.

Well in my 'mirror of Westeros' theory, which is holding its own as far as Yi Ti is concerned, the Lengi are likely the Yi Tish version of the Children. In fact, well before the show, years ago now, I speculated that the Lengi queens 'marriages' to two husbands, one to control her navy, the other to control her army, meant that the Children had formed two races, one ocean-based to control or prevent the original mariners arriving, the other land-based to control arrival by land to Westeros.  Merlings and skinchangers. We've little evidence of merlings though enough hints something's in the water, but lots for skinchangers.  This 'marriage'does not have to mean a literal marriage, of course, but some kind of transformation.

But since First Men were already in Westeros and seemingly adapting, it's curious, as Yandel remarks, that the Children, with or without First Men assistance, then exploded the Arm of Dorne. Its closest correlation to real life myth I can think of is Moses parting the Red Sea.  The Children were "saving" their people but destroying the "Other" people, thei enslavers or tyrants of First Men. 

So why might they do this:

1) I like the idea above about severing the weir network between continents, as if the Children did not want something to poison it, as perhaps it was poisoned when they lived there.

2) I similarly, if we subscribe to your networks theory, think the type of people that started arriving were not wanted. Westeros has its faults, but it's a continent of immigrants, possibly also fleeing the kind of slavery endemic to Essos and it's conquerors. Nymeria is a good example and reminder of an exodus from tyranny and slavery.  So is Braavos.  It's a possible reason slavery as an institution never really took hold in Westeros, though milder systems of serfdom and thralldom, did, because most of the FM were escaping from it.

3) Also, without wanting to go down the BSE rabbit hole too far, the island closest to Essos after the Arm is broken, is called Bloodstone, suggesting an invading army with BSE tendencies crossing after slaves, being obliterated by stone and water, and all that's left to mark who or what they were is that last outpost before the flood, Bloodstone Island.

My instinct, therefore, tells me that the slavers of Essos started arriving on Westeros with antithetical gods and antithetical purpose, possibly part of an antithetical "fire network" that meant certain death to the old gods, the Children and the First Men converts. And so Moses severed the Arm.

That's excellent! It could also explain the extinction of the essosi Children,

53 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I like this idea too because it ties into my first family idea of many with purple eyes, fleeing the slavery of the Bloodstone Emperor.  What colour do Braavos use in their sails?  In-story we're given a reason for it, but George to my mind coloured them purple because purple was the colour of the kings that led the exodus from Essos out of slavery to Westeros.

It echoes in our two known chosen ones as well, this idea of leading a people to safety, and abolishing slavery.  Jon with the Wildlings, Dany with the people of Slavers Bay.  It's completely against their best self-interest to do either of these things, in one case leading to Jon's death, in the other to Dany's revolts.  It's almost as if some archaic archetype of behaviour from antiquity, a driving force from a common ancestor, dictates these instincts. And I'd pull it not from the Targs but from the other side of the family, which both have in spades, Blackwoods and Starks.

I'll leave this alone now, but I did want to point out a few other associations in-text to do with the colour purple.  Bloodstone, as LML pointed out, is also called heliotrope, and heliotrope in the natural plant variety, is purple.  Amethyst is purple.  Heliotrope means "sunfacing" (but BSE turns to a black rock instead).   The woman with the monkey's tail in Yi Ti that ended the Long Night (they still wear monkey's tails in their hats to commemorate her) on a par with Azor Ahai and the rest, was a curiosity, until I discovered another name for heliotrope is 'monkey's tail'.

Purple is for kings. Purple is a mix of red (fire) and blue (ice). Purple is for Daynes. Purple is for "sun-facers". Purple is for slave escape. Purple is for exodus. Purple is for the hero or heroine that ends the Long Night-the Last Hero man or woman with the monkey's tail.

It's also my favorite color and this all sounds good to me.

55 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

 We can say purple is for Valyrians too, but I think that just marks them as descendents from the proto-Daynes. There is a plant called red Valeria more appropriate -aside from their eye color, Targaryens are fire and blood - red.

And don't forget black. Makes me wonder about Darkstar.

[Lady Barbrey]

12 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

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Re: Aegon and Summerhall - I think that whatever tragedy occurred at Summerhall is deeply intertwined with the workings of this story. 

Yeah absolutely.

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I

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agree that magic is on the rise, but again, the question is why now? It was occurring before the dragons were born/hatched.  I am becoming more and more of the persuasion that Bloodraven crossing beyond the Wall broke or damaged a magical barrier.  Some thoughts regarding this:

1) Melisandre's magic is stronger at the Wall. Why? Fire magic infused at the Wall - makes sense. I have also heard that the Wall is located at a magical pulse point, like magic radiates from there.

Probably both. But the Wall does not seem a barrier to her practicing magic on it, whereas Storm's End does seem to keep all magic's, including fire, out (but not dragons).This means to me that the Wall itself was probably constructed by fire-magic users.  

 

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2) As has been mentioned, Jon and Ghost's warging connection is broken when they are separated by the Wall. Why is this? Why is theirs broken when Bran seems to be able to connect to weirwoods out of network? He doesn't seem to be out of service (haha! brings new meaning to communication when not in service!)

Excellent question that already arose on another thread.  Consensus seems to be the weir network has deep roots under the Wall, and even if Bran doesn't physically connect he's now at a place he can remote control their use.  Consensus on Jon and Ghost unclear - unless with weir like Bran, the Wall appears to sever all connections of between warg and warged.
 

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3) I believe the Others have been amassing an army, but Coldhands also leads us to believe that there is still a magical barrier that keeps them from returning. So we know that from this plus Jon's and Ghost's broken connection plus Mel's increased magic that the Wall does still have some magical barrier/defense. But this does not explain why Bran can connect to outside weirwoods.

4) How do we know Bran can connect to outside weirwoods? the sample WoW chapter seems to indicate he will see things that occur at the Winterfell hearttree, but regardless of that, we have canonical knowledge that he has seen events from Winterfell (at a minimum) concerning his father. At the very least, this means that the weirwood network is connected in such a way that memories/time/images/whatever we are calling it can be seen even if they are from weirwoods beyond the Wall.

 

See above.  I'm actually satisfied with the weir connection, deep roots, for a powerful greenseer like Bran explanation.

 

5)

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The magic still exists, but appears to be fragmented.  It also appears that for a true invasion to occur, the barrier has to be broken. - not saying the Wall has to come down, just the magic broken.

I don't think it has been fragmented.  How do we know it has been fragmented?  I think it holds its spells as it always has.
6

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) Have other Targaryens been sent to the Wall prior to Aemon and Bloodraven (who arrived on the same ship)? It has been awhile since I have read World book. They arrived at the same time and with Dark Sister.  Could that much magic at a magic pulse point cause things to start breaking down?

7) Bloodraven has blood of the First Men - the Blackwoods and Valyrian blood - Aegon IV. Perhaps this mix started breaking down the magical bonds of the Wall?

 

I don't know any, but I think It's unlikely in 400 years none have been sent.

Once again, why do you think they've been breaking down?

The Fire and Blood Excerpt thread discusses the Wall and Alysanne thing in some of its posts, with weigh -in by Ran, so my own ideas have been modulated by that.  Maybe take a look?

Just don't think Bloodraven stepping beyond the Wall would upset them enough to start a war.  But who knows?

 

[Lady Barbrey]

12 minutes ago, hiemal said:

That's excellent! It could also explain the extinction of the essosi Children,

It's also my favorite color and this all sounds good to me.

And don't forget black. Makes me wonder about Darkstar.

Yes!  All the way through writing that I kept thinking Darkstar.  If it were anyone but Doran who called him the most dangerous man in the kingdom, I would take it more seriously.

But he is a Dayne 'of the night',  he says himself.  With what I have written above, he has basically just aligned himself with the BSE or Others, a 'sunfacing' Dayne that turns to the 'night', the black stone.  Throws me!

[The Mother of The Others]

10 hours ago, Bobity. said:

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"Aye, she has the mark. Like all Borrells, for five thousand years.”

Webbed hand and mysterious marks are genetic traits passed along by family.  There is some type of marine animal affinity going on.  Any evidence of sacrificing?

[Intentionally left blank]

Obviously their founder banged a merling to gain the sea's blessing for their settlement to endure.  The founding members of most modern houses were great lays.  point being that you don't have to resort to as much of the blood stuff these days if you can impress the powers that be in other ways.

[Lady Barbrey]

10 hours ago, Bobity. said:

Their seems to be some consensus that sacrificing and magic are strongly, but probably not exclusively linked. I got a theory that generational sacrificing is also part of the unexplained phenomenon of certain cultures and families having animal traits passed down.

Here are a couple observations I had drafted up.

Ghiscari

In the absence of an actual description of a harpy, this is the best we will get I think.  Fleshy, broad nose and queer wiry punky hair.  

While the Sons of the Harpy nightly killings are clearly acts of resistance to Dany’s rule, I propose that there is more to it, and that these killings were performed as blood sacrifices with the blood drawn hapries part of the ritual.  Considering that the Ghiscari have been slavers since Grazdan the Great, victim availability would not have been an issue.

The use of “dawn of days” to describe Grazdan The Great’s history raises a flag for me.  The phrase is often used to describe ancient times, with a figure of 10,000 provided by Darkstar. “My House goes back ten thousand years, unto the dawn of days,”.  I dispute the maester narrative that Essos was a blank slate with the end of the Long Night, and that the empires of Valyria and Old Ghis do not have histories during the Age of Heroes.

Sister Islanders

I absolutely love rereading ADWD Davos l, everyone gets in a tizzy about the rumor of Jon’s patronage at the end, but it's everything before that Lord Godric Borrell tells abouty of the Sister Islands that fascinates me.

While big and fleshy are ambiguous, webbed hand and mysterious marks are genetic trait passed along by family.  There is some type of marine animal affinity going on.  Any evidence of sacrificing?

Ok, history of sacrificing to old gods, and a dismay in the banning of the practice by the Andals.  But did they really stop?

Grisley, not direct evidence of current sacrificing, but a long history (possibly continuing) of Sister Islander sacrificing are I believe the source of their physical peculiarities of marks and webbed hands.

Dothraki

Would it be a stretch to say that a Dothraki resembled a horse?  Well, you are what you eat I suppose.  

Aside from the daily slaughter for their diet of horse, I can find two sacrificial rituals including horses.

- Ritually sacrifice a horse so a pregnant women may consume its heart. 

- Sacrificing a horse to be used as the core of a ritualistic funeral pyre.

I believe that these sacrificial rituals and preferred diet have been deeply woven into Dothraki society and are not perceived to be blood magic, but are passively  contributing to the Dothraki physiological affinity to horses.

 

 

Interesting stuff!  I tend to think of physical similarities as genetics mostly, but the horse sacrifice of the Indo-Europeans is one of the oldest rituals we know in the real world, and the idea similar.  So passively contributing to Dothraki horse affinity sounds about right to me!

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

 

6 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

The Faceless are more like Varys than the CotF in how they operate.  

"Varis" refers to the "hooded crow" in Finnish, I think Varys has a connection to the network also. 

"Ned's mouth twisted in anger. "Damn Varys and his little birds. Catelyn spoke truly, the man has some black art" . . .

"You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask is that you work your magic awhile longer."  . . .

Varys: "My lord, do you believe in the old powers?"

"Magic, you mean?" Tyrion said impatiently. "Bloodspells, curses, shapeshifting, those sorts of things?" He snorted. "Do you mean to suggest that Ser Cortnay was magicked to his death?" . . .

"My lord, you once asked me how it was that I was cut." . . .

" With a long hooked blade, he sliced me root and stem, chanting all the while. I watched him burn my manly parts on a brazier. The flames turned blue, and I heard a voice answer his call, though I did not understand the words they spoke."

"Yet I still dream of that night, my lord. Not of the sorcerer, nor his blade, nor even the way my manhood shriveled as it burned. I dream of the voice. The voice from the flames. Was it a god, a demon, some conjurer's trick? I could not tell you, and I know all the tricks. All I can say for a certainty is that he called it, and it answered, and since that day I have hated magic and all those who practice it. "

 

 Varys suggests that the voice in the blue flame was the "old powers" --that is, the old gods, and who do we know that is associated with the old gods and regularly visits people in their dreams?

 

I think the voice in the blue flame was the 3 eyed crow (not Bloodraven, but the leader of the Others), and it got into Varys' mind through the ritual and has been in communication with him ever since, getting Varys to act on his behalf (all the characters whose names are related to crows are working for the 3 eyed crow)

 

From the scene with Varys and Illyrio:

 

"So many?" The voices were fainter as the light dwindled ahead of her. "The ones you need are hard to find … so young, to know their letters … perhaps older … not die so easy …"

"No. The younger are safer … treat them gently …"

"… if they kept their tongues …"

"… the risk …"

Varys is involved in a kidnapping/child slavery scheme where the kids get their tongues cut out, are forced into servitude and killed when they are no longer useful.  This is a massive blood sacrifice that he offers to the weirwood in exchange for knowledge, and he uses that knowledge to destabilize Westeros and plunge it into civil war. 

"Yet we who presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the realm, howevermuch it pains us."

Varys confessed to killing Kevan because Kevan was trying to unite the seven kingdoms.

"Ser Kevan. Forgive me if you can. I bear you no ill will. This was not done from malice. It was for the realm. For the children." " but you were threatening to undo all the queen's good work, to reconcile Highgarden and Casterly Rock, bind the Faith to your little king, unite the Seven Kingdoms under Tommen's rule. So …"

And in his conversation with Illyrio in the tunnels, he was stirring up strife the whole time (like Ratatosk, the squirrel who lives on Yggdrasil, who carries messages of malice)
 

"Tell me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?"

Varys smiled thinly. "Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace."

 

I think Varys is actually telling the truth.

Varys is softening up the realm in preparation for the invasion of the Others.  The Others are actually the good guys and are trying to save humanity from the weirwood.  Varys is trying to remove any opposition for when the Others come south and head for the God's Eye to destroy the main weirwood.  But what you said about man laying hands on god's power, the weirwood is too powerful, and its influence too corrupting, and that is why the 3ec/Bran/the Others and their allies are going to destroy the weirwood.  As long as there is an incentive to commit child sacrifice, the children won't be safe, and Varys wants to make the realm safe for the children and bring peace to the realm, that means they have to destroy the weirwood and destroy magic.

 

"You did not trust me?" Ned was frankly astonished.

"The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard," Varys said. "Those who are loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until this morning, I could not say which you might be … so I waited to see … and now I know, for a certainty." He smiled a plump tight little smile, and for a moment his private face and public mask were one. "I begin to comprehend why the queen fears you so much. Oh, yes I do."

"You are the one she ought to fear," Ned said.

Varys wears "masks" and he is very similar to a faceless man in that he is a master of disguise.

 

And Illyrio is a deep-cover Faceless Man. "Grossly fat, yet he seemed to walk lightly, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet as a water dancer might." 

Illyrios in Greek mythology is the son of the savage man-eating cyclops Polythemus ("abounding in songs and legends") and a sea nymph Galatea ("she who is milk-white") sound like he is the son of the weirwood.

This is the story of Illyrius' father Polythemus:

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In Homer's epic, Odysseus lands on the island of the Cyclops during his journey home from the Trojan War and, together with some of his men, enters a cave filled with provisions. When the giant Polyphemus returns home with his flocks, he blocks the entrance with a great stone and, scoffing at the usual custom of hospitality, eats two of the men. Next morning, the giant kills and eats two more and leaves the cave to graze his sheep.

After the giant returns in the evening and eats two more of the men, Odysseus offers Polyphemus some strong and undiluted wine given to him earlier on his journey. Drunk and unwary, the giant asks Odysseus his name, promising him a guest-gift if he answers. Odysseus tells him "Οὖτις", which means "nobody [or "no-one"]"^[2] and Polyphemus promises to eat this "Nobody" last of all. With that, he falls into a drunken sleep. Odysseus had meanwhile hardened a wooden stake in the fire and drives it into Polyphemus' eye. When Polyphemus shouts for help from his fellow giants, saying that "Nobody" has hurt him, they think Polyphemus is being afflicted by divine power and recommend prayer as the answer.

In the morning, the blind Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, feeling their backs to ensure that the men are not escaping. However, Odysseus and his men have tied themselves to the undersides of the animals and so get away. As he sails off with his men, Odysseus boastfully reveals his real name, an act of hubris that was to cause problems for him later. Polyphemus prays to his father, Poseidon, for revenge and casts huge rocks towards the ship, which Odysseus barely escapes.

The story reappears in later Classical literature. In Cyclops, the 5th century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief from the grisly story of how Polyphemus is punished for his impious behaviour in not respecting the rites of hospitality

A savage giant who breaks guest-right and eats his guests in a cave, sounds like a weirwood.

And Mopatis is an anagram of imposta which is an Italian verb meaning "to set up a plan"

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 10/22/2018 at 7:37 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

I read fantasy like candy, read Arthuriana and myth, so can think of another half dozen literary foundations for the God's Eye. But on the whole your comparison works too, so why not?

I agree with you, I think ASOIAF is a grand over-arching mythology to explain all of these other stories, the Isle of Faces is Avalon from Arthurian legend, (the Isle of Apples), in Norse myth the Idunn's apples maintain the god's immortality, in Greek myth the Garden of the Hesperides, there is a secret island where the golden apples grow, and in Celtic myth "To enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by death, a passport was often necessary, and this was usually a silver branch of the sacred apple-tree bearing blossoms." in the Voyage of Bran, he gets the silver branch and goes to the Otherworld, and when he tries to return finds that hundreds of years have passed (Bran time-travels), and that he cannot return to the land of the living and sails off into the sea. 

 

One Lovecraft note, in the short story called He, a sorcerer is able to give the main character glimpses into the past, and he goes as far back as he can and this is what he sees:

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I saw a vista which will ever afterward torment me in dreams. I saw the heavens verminous with strange flying things, and beneath them a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows. And swarming loathsomely on aërial galleries I saw the yellow, squint-eyed people of that city, robed horribly in orange and red, and dancing insanely to the pounding of fevered kettle-drums, the clatter of obscene crotala, and the maniacal moaning of muted horns whose ceaseless dirges rose and fell undulantly like the waves of an unhallowed ocean of bitumen.
I saw this vista, I say, and heard as with the mind’s ear the blasphemous domdaniel of cacophony which companioned it. It was the shrieking fulfilment of all the horror which that corpse-city had ever stirred in my soul, and forgetting every injunction to silence I screamed and screamed and screamed as my nerves gave way and the walls quivered about me.

The description sounds like Asshai, and it is called the corpse-city.  He was set in New York City, so the corpse-city is/was on our Earth, in our past.

[Lady Barbrey]

12 hours ago, hiemal said:

Just riffing on Arthurian myth in general and how GRRM might have subverted and inserted it into the Song. I don't want to wander far into the weeds, but I think the swords/grails thing is tied up in issue of magic overall, or at least with the Lightbringer incident and its historic fallout.

If LB is the anti-excalibur then there should be an unholy grail in the mix. We have the Persival/Florian thing going on, the ancient Fisher Queens...

But is it pointing to something important or is GRRM just dangling more red herrings in front of us?

 

I don't think he does subvert it mostly.  He made lovers Lancelot and Guinevere into a pair of incestuous twins, and Arthur into their little dwarf brother, but he keeps the themes intact!

It's funny but in Arthurian saga, there are in fact three swords, one pulled from the stone, one given to him by the lady of the lake, and another called Clerent that Morded steals.  The first two are thought to be Excalibur/Caliburn. I think we can positively them or

it with Dawn, wielded by worthy white knight Arthur, taken when he dies back to the 'lady of the lake' Ashara, pulled from a stone at Starfall.  No one screams rightful kings of the First Men quite like the Daynes do simply by owning that sword.

The thing is Darkstar is a Mordred figure and Mordred steals yet another Sword of Arthur's, the sword signifying kingship, called Clerent, and uses it to kill his father. Shades of the Blood Betrayal perhaps?

I don't know quite how Darkstar's story will play out, but we can assume or anticipate a few things: he's a bastard of incestuous but kingly birth, he abducts/seduces a queen, he spreads lies well, he usurps the king at one point, he steals the King's sword, battles against the king in the last battle and wins, kills the king his father, and takes over the kingdom, which is the last we hear of any great Camelot so I surmise he ruins it.

If we had a better idea of which king he might do these things to we might be better able to answer which of them he might do.  He's already seduced Arianne, a royal female figure, and abducted Mircella, another royal female.  I'm rather hoping he'll seduce Cersei and end her, but that's just wishful thinking!

As for Lightbringer, I'm pretty sure that was Dawn wielded by a proto-Dayne turned dragon-rider, both called swords of the morning.  Dawn just needs a little fire and blood added to the mix like her former wielder.

Do we need an anti-Lightbringer?

The grails,  by the way, I can pretty positively identify as the Stark (or Tully) maidens. The grail knights looking for them are the almost-successful Lancelot, Jaime, and the purest knight of all - who also pulls a sword from a stone, Lancelot's son, Galahad, who is successful - our lady Brienne.  But this is the Fisher King story with nothing to do with the Starks and everything to do with the Tully's.

I don't think it has much to do with magic.

I must stop digressing .