Theories on Magic in Westeros

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, hiemal said:

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...

And my brain just twisted...

I never read that bit about the CotF and bat messengers.  Really?

Two pronged approach, yes been wondering that too.

[The Mother of The Others]

5 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

(Lots)

Sweet.  Okay.    When you said the Others are the good guys,  it reminded me of this recent moment of poetic clarity- -

Essos is a continent where the devil won.  And as the victor, he got to rewrite the bible.  Which is why they've got a hellfire demon cast as their Jehovah over there who is kinda heinous and inspires the whole continent of jerks to let their jerk flag fly.   Then, if Essos is hell's victory, that must be why the other continent's Ice Losers are Walled off in an eternal prison camp and have been demonized in the press.   Heaven is indeed cold in defeat.    That would make Others the good guys.  And the Starks look suddenly strange as the prison guards.

I want to see the Others reach the God's Eye too.   To see what happens.  I don't think they're good for humanity anymore though, radioactive, lethal by their Cold advance alone, and i don't think the tales are lying about the ultra icky fate that befell humanity under the Others last time.  Let's hope for a better hope than Others "fighting for us" in their current state.  Like maybe they can undo the vampire curse on themselves and the weirwoods once they reach those roots where the voodoo was done, and after that nobody has to kill the rest of the weir . Eh?

..........Faceless Men vs. Varys:

So yes, my beloved Faceless may have bitten off more weir bark than they can chew.  I'm willing to consider they may be lost and corrupted loons whose attempt to control the trees was hubric and doomed after all.  But your Odysseus vs.Cyclops story can also be turned around to provide a strong defence of the Faceless as humanity's finest, most FREE magic users:

  if you look at the Faceless and then at Varys, doesn't Varys look more like the corrupted figure whose truthfulness is also truly insane?   You've got him breaking everything to save it.  Maybe he truly believes the 3 eyed crow but is being duped down the Judas path to betray humanity?

Meanwhile the Faceless come off more like George's version of the wiley Odysseus.  Odysseus resisted the monster by being No Man.   So too the Faceless resist the weirwood  (and avoid other ego- based pitfalls) by being No One, thus giving the weir nothing of themselves to influence.  Highly disciplined, that bunch.  If anyone will make the mistake of shouting out her true name at the monsters and then suffering for it, that'd be Arya.  But ego isn't a failing of the Faceless Men as a whole.   Nor is corruption.  Their psyches seem spotless.    They seem our most unconflicted, clear headed faction who out- clever every obstacle.

Varys doesn't seem to be resisting monstrousness quite so well.  

Yet i can still imagine Varys as the good guy too, like you say, getting his disguises done with smoke and mirrors while the Faceless get to cheat because of evil weir power.  Like when the legit Rocky trained on a shoestring budget while the Russian boxer had all the bells and whistles but was a deplorable soul.  

 

[Lady Rhodes]

10 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

 

Two thoughts on this:

1) Bran and the Weirwood net - You and others have provided a solid explanation as to why he could still communicate even though the Wall was up. I am just offering an alternative - that it is a sign that the barriers are starting to erode.

2) The wights -  When they bring the corpses back to Castle Black in AGoT, they reanimate once through the Wall.  They attacked! I suspect that since they can obviously cause damage south of the Wall, that they initially were not supposed to be able to pass through.  Thus, I think the ability of the wights to pass through could be a sign of the barriers eroding.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 10/23/2018 at 5:59 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

What this means to me is that magic potency in total in and of  itself is increasing everywhere with or without dragons, so this should be in effect the reverse: dragons can be reborn after a long hiaitus because magic is rising. 

Do the Others bring the (magic) cold or does the cold bring the Others?  Do the Dragons bring the magic rise or does magic rising bring the Dragons?  They happen simultaneously to observers, so cause and effect could be understandably mixed up.

I don't think I've settled it, but my working theory is that magic, as a force of physics in this world, is rising across the board irrespective of dragons being born.

The weirwoods have been sleeping and the return of the Red Comet (which is also a weirwood) woke them up.  In Lovecraft the Old Gods sleep until the stars are right.

It is the Ragnarok cycle, every 5000 years or so the Red Comet comes back around and the weirwoods go apeshit cause the Long Night and they send in the Others to kill everyone and reset civilization.

Everyone here should read Asimov's short story Nightfall, it is about a civilization that has 6 suns and has never experienced darkness, but every 2000 years an undiscovered dark planet causes an eclipse and the society goes insane and burns everything down and civilization is reset, and this has happened at least 9 times.  The cultists who prophecy the doom are called Apostles of Flame (they sound like R'hllorists).  The last line of the story is "The long night has come again."  The protagonists have a plan to save some people and the accumulation of human knowledge in a bunker called Sanctuary. 

valuur means "the hour of nightfall" in dutch, I think Valar morgulis translates to "in the hour of nightfall mother/the forest floor/the god of death eats or its mouth is red" --all men must die because when the Long Night comes the weirwood will eat all men.

The network was functioning the whole time, just at a lower level.  Greenseerers were being born, but the 3 eyed crow was killing them in their sleep, in order to starve the weirwood--this is the thousand other dreamers impaled on ice spears that Bran sees in his falling dreams. 

That is part of why the network is operating below capacity, I think the castles along the wall are a metaphor for weirwood thrones, only 3 of 19 are occupied, the unoccupied ones are called "ghost castles."

"Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria"  More like the weirwoods were tired and shagged-out after a prolonged squawk--the energy the weirwoods expended to nuke Valyria tapped them out, and they were only resting.  A massive blood sacrifice could have woken them again though.

I think dragons are an entirely separate class of phenomena from weirwoods and weirwood magic, I know nobody likes this idea, but I think they are really dragon-shaped aircars like from George's Dying of the Light, and Tuf Voyaging.  That would explain why dragonbone is flexible and heavy with iron, it is a space age metal.  The dragons have a security feature that only people with the right DNA can ride them, and unauthorized persons get burned to death (Quentyn).  Dragons roost in caves, cars roost in garages.  When the dragons were "born" the glass candles came online, because they are powered by the dragon remotely.  Speaking of remotes, the dragonbinder horn is a remote control

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The horn he blew was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.

Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands that girded it. "Valyrian glyphs," Moqorro called them.

That much Victarion had known. "What do they say?"

"Much and more." The black priest pointed to one golden band. "Here the horn is named. 'I am Dragonbinder,' it says. Have you ever heard it sound?"

"Once." One of his brother's mongrels had sounded the hellhorn at the kingsmoot on Old Wyk. A monster of a man he had been, huge and shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest. "The sound it made … it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one."

And the man who blew the horn, what of him?"

"He died. There were blisters on his lips, after. His bird was bleeding too." The captain thumped his chest. "The hawk, just here. Every feather dripping blood. I heard the man was all burned up inside, but that might just have been some tale."

"A true tale." Moqorro turned the hellhorn, examining the queer letters that crawled across a second of the golden bands. "Here it says, 'No mortal man shall sound me and live.' "

The dragonbinder also has the security feature, an unauthorized person tried to activate it and it electrocuted him to death through his mouth.  The glowing Valyrian glyphs sound like illuminated buttons.  

Dragons don't have gender, the Stranger of the Seven doesn't have gender, I think that is a hint they are both machines, not natural phenomena.

Wildfire is Greek fire, and greek fire is not magical it is refined oil. essentially napalm that was used in ancient warfare, they shot it out of squirt guns at other ships.  

In ASOIAF wildfire is described like a combination of kerosene and nitroglycerin, neither of which are magical, and wildfire is a close cousin of dragonfire, which makes me think dragonfire is not magical either, but technological.

Aegon IV tried to build dragons "These wood-and-iron monstrosities, fitted with pumps that shot jets of wildfire" it was a cargo-cult imitation of real dragons. 

" Tyrion had read much and more of dragons through the years. The greater part of those accounts were idle tales and could not be relied on. Septon Barth's Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History."

Dragons are unnatural, not natural, maybe artificial constructs, machines.

 

 

To all the people in this thread who think magic is a mysterious but natural part of Planetos,

"Greenseers. . . Was it magic?"

"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."

 

"Lord Commander, wights are monstrous, unnatural creatures. Abominations before the eyes of the gods. "

" Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies."

"Though the bloodmages were alleged to have experimented mightily with their unnatural arts"

"You Starks are as unnatural as those wolves of yours"

 

"Though the Citadel has long sought to learn the manner by which it may predict the length and change of seasons, all efforts have been confounded. Septon Barth appeared to argue, in a fragmentary treatise, that the inconstancy of the seasons was a matter of magical art rather than trustworthy knowledge. Maester Nicol's The Measure of the Days—otherwise a laudable work containing much of use—seems influenced by this argument. Based upon his work on the movement of stars in the firmament, Nicol argues unconvincingly that the seasons might once have been of a regular length, determined solely by the way in which the globe faces the sun in its heavenly course. The notion behind it seems true enough—that the lengthening and shortening of days, if more regular, would have led to more regular seasons—but he could find no evidence that such was ever the case, beyond the most ancient of tales."

 

Dragons, wights, wargs, valyrian steel, and the irregular seasons, are all unnatural.  Something not native to the planet, outside the natural order of things. 

 

 

In Jack Vance's Dying Earth, magic is technology, and in his Dragon Masters (everyone should read the plot summary) the dragons are aliens that enslave humans and keep humans primitive, but the humans have a secret rocket hidden in a cavern that they use to destroy the alien space ship (does that sound like a weirwood rocket shooting a spaceship out of the sky?), and in his Son of the Tree, and giant alien tree god eats people, and those sacrificed get to live a second life in the tree, and is served by the Druids, the entire economy of the planet is organized to serve the tree, part of the plot is that another faction want to spread the tree to other planets.

 

 

[Lady Barbrey]

20 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

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?

It's not my best understanding of it.  Is it yours? 

[The Mother of The Others]

18 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

   Darkstar is a Mordred figure

he abducts/seduces a queen, spreads lies, usurps the king and steals his sword, battles against the king in the last battle and wins, kills the king his father, and takes over the kingdom.

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

It's refreshing to see someone dare to dream large for Darkstar the Oft Ridiculed.   I see big things in his future too.  The kingsguard on his trail is probably the one being hunted.  Does that knight have a special sword worth claiming, or just regular steal?   There's the Joff half of Ice that'd count as a kingly blade to nab.  Sitting around isn't it at the capital, not off in the field with Jaime.

We see the Dornish efforts failing and their people stirring in frustration.  I feel Darkstar is the most dangerous man in Dorne specifically from Doran's point of view because Star takes over from Martell as the man of action Doran isn't.  He's the one who rallies the troops for that inadvisable march against KL.   I see Cercei going the Euron partnership direction, so her bed is taken, and I see Highgarden falling from that and from all sides really as the theme of the Flowers lately is they're overextending themselves and are stretched too thin to protect their home court. 

I take Aegon more seriously than most readers, and if Cersei flees and Aegon takes KL and Darkstar's Dornish got in on that seige, that'd set him up for a "trusted" spot in the new regime, a nice stage upon which his disturbing endgame theatrics could play out.  Is he, and not Daenerys, the end of Aegon?  What if Star is the false banner from Danny's vision, meaning Aegon is basically true to her!  Danny may thus be freed up from the cliche of facing Aegon on a field of fire II, instead gaining enough time to tackle Cersei at Casterly Rock with Tyrion and then get involved in the Citadel plot of dragon & magic politics and how to fight the Others. 

.....Hey!  If Darkstar is a spreader of lies, and Stormy is a slayer of lies, that works out, right?  Problem is, it might work out tragically too late, after Star's damage is done and KL is against Danny ever queening there.  Most spectacularly, Star and/or Varys could supply the Others with a fateful Trojan Horse way of entering KL and killing everyone dead, which would reeeely free Danny up from the conquest plotline by nixing it.  Easy then to concentrate on Ice & Fire biz fulltime, and with a passion.

[The Mother of The Others]

6 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

It's not my best understanding of it.  Is it yours? 

That was some exaspiration over how much of what we "know" is still totally up in the air.

 

This God's Eye business is fun to ponder.  I'm familiar with norse apples as god-sustaining food, and the greek version of the apples, but the arthur apple isle is new to me and looks like the most direct corollary?   What do you see happening when the starved 'gods ' arrive there.  Will the Others reverse-age as if they've just applied the best revitalizing skin cream ever?   (seriously.)    It's long been wondered whether Bran travels back in time via the tree portal to be the Builder bran.   The downside is this opens the way for Jon to be Other #1, night king, 3EC, whatever.   So That's a big "yea!... booo!"

[Lady Barbrey]

9 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

Two thoughts on this:

1) Bran and the Weirwood net - You and others have provided a solid explanation as to why he could still communicate even though the Wall was up. I am just offering an alternative - that it is a sign that the barriers are starting to erode.

2) The wights -  When they bring the corpses back to Castle Black in AGoT, they reanimate once through the Wall.  They attacked! I suspect that since they can obviously cause damage south of the Wall, that they initially were not supposed to be able to pass through.  Thus, I think the ability of the wights to pass through could be a sign of the barriers eroding.

Well, that could be.  Ran didn't seem that sure on what was going on at the Wall either (he seemed to kind of backtrack) and he wrote WoIaF!  I went on a huge spec based on dragons not being able to cross, only to halt when he said Alysanne's dragon just sensed the ice magic being held back by the Wall.  Lord Varys then was asking about the wights, and I weighed in as well, because it made no sense. Our answer was apparently they couldn't cross of their own volition, but when inanimate by daylight they could be brought across, and they reanimated with pre-programming in place once it got dark.  He also said that weir rootnetwork beneath the Wall was likely, in answer to another poster.  So honestly, I don't want to speculate too much about the Wall because I'm not sure anyone knows, let alone us poor forum members. But I'm going with what he said as he is as close to the horse's mouth as there is.  You might read his answers differently than me, though, so if you haven't already, take a look yourself at that thread.

[Lady Barbrey]

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

It's refreshing to see someone dare to dream large for Darkstar the Oft Ridiculed.   I see big things in his future too.  The kingsguard on his trail is probably the one being hunted.  Does that knight have a special sword worth claiming, or just regular steal?   There's the Joff half of Ice that'd count as a kingly blade to nab.  Sitting around isn't it at the capital, not off in the field with Jaime.

We see the Dornish efforts failing and their people stirring in frustration.  I feel Darkstar is the most dangerous man in Dorne specifically from Doran's point of view because Star takes over from Martell as the man of action Doran isn't.  He's the one who rallies the troops for that inadvisable march against KL.   I see Cercei going the Euron partnership direction, so her bed is taken, and I see Highgarden falling from that and from all sides really as the theme of the Flowers lately is they're overextending themselves and are stretched too thin to protect their home court. 

I take Aegon more seriously than most readers, and if Cersei flees and Aegon takes KL and Darkstar's Dornish got in on that seige, that'd set him up for a "trusted" spot in the new regime, a nice stage upon which his disturbing endgame theatrics could play out.  Is he, and not Daenerys, the end of Aegon?  What if Star is the false banner from Danny's vision, meaning Aegon is basically true to her!  Danny may thus be freed up from the cliche of facing Aegon on a field of fire II, instead gaining enough time to tackle Cersei at Casterly Rock with Tyrion and then get involved in the Citadel plot of dragon & magic politics and how to fight the Others.  .....Hey!  If Darkstar is a spreader of lies, and Stormy is a slayer of lies, that works out, right?  Problem is, it might work out tragically too late, after Star's damage is done and KL is against Danny ever queening there.

I have literally no faith in the Dornish to accomplish anything since Oberyn tried, and failed, to kill the Mountain, with the possible exception of Sarella, who seems to have distanced herself from her kin and is playing her own game.

Darkstar is as likely to steal the wrong sword, kill the wrong king, abduct the wrong queen, and fight the wrong battle as he is to do anything significant.  I still think he'll do a variation on those themes in some way.  And tying him to Aegon as you've done makes that seem all the more possible!

I like what you've said about the Tyrells over extending.  

I do think Dany will face Aegon at some point because I think this is where her desire to be "good" will be tested I think.  Fire and Blood will take over and it will shake her even more than us.

[hiemal]

22 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

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!

It throws me how often we seem to be like Mike and Ike.

How do see the settlement of Tarth in relationship with the founding of Starfall and the re-immigration Westrward. The names involved are simply too suggestive. A golden dragon for more info on Morne! Morne/Dorne/Dawn... Starfall/Evenfall/Evenstar/Venus/Lucifer...  Darkstar?

 

[hiemal]

20 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

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!

Get...Out...Of...My...Head!!!!lol

20 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

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?

Bingo.

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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.

Hmmm, that makes sense but I'm not sure on the chronology? The idea of simultaneous mirrored catastrophes is making a lot of sense- do you see the Daynes exodus from the East as contemporary with the BSE and the severing of the continents? I'm liking the possibilities here.

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Do we need an anti-Lightbringer?

I think we have one in Just Maid.

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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.

Interesting. I'm going to have to chew on that for a while longer but I like the taste?

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I must stop digressing .

Sorry/not sorry

You never know where a random thought can take you...

[hiemal]

20 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

And my brain just twisted...

I never read that bit about the CotF and bat messengers.  Really?

I'm mentally trying to pin it down... but I think so? I'll get back to you when I remember my source on that but I think it was a Bran chapter? It made me wonder if maybe ravens came over with the andals since they have an origin story for them. Of course, it could just be that they used ravens for day jobs and bats for night's work and abandoned both. Or that they actually use both to this day. It seems like pretty much everything people have said the CotF has been proven wrong, for example that they are extinct...

Or it could always be that I have misrembered the bat thing. I probably have it dog-eared in my defaced/marked copy but a couple volumes are out on loan atm. I can be quite missionary about books.

[The Mother of The Others]

12 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Greenseers were being born, but the 3 eyed crow was killing them in their sleep, in order to starve the weirwood--this is the thousand other dreamers impaled on ice spears that Bran sees in his falling dreams.  That is part of why the network is operating below capacity.

"Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria"  More like the weirwoods were tired after the energy expended to nuke Valyria tapped them out.

I know nobody likes this idea, but I think they are dragon shaped aircars

In Jack Vance's Dragon Masters the dragons are aliens that enslave humans and keep humans primitive

Best post ever?   Beautiful deep dive as usual, but especially solid on top of that.

So in your view, Bloodraven isn't a special standout in history from prior CotF greenseers but just more of the same, another slave to the weir who we shouldn't expect any unique historical accomplishments from, as readers might be hoping for.   In fact, Bran will need to be rescued from Bloodraven by the Others so he can become more than a slavedriver and be shown instead some useful way his powers can be used to aid humanity?   

Awww.  Another sad change would be the living weirwood gate under the Wall is no longer a wonderful mystery hinting at a time of better understanding between humans, Children and Trees.  Now, in light of your view, that doorway becomes a horrifying sign that the nightswatch & its wall have always been working for the vicious antihuman trees to help keep the freedom-fighting Others imprisoned.   (I'm having a bit of difficulty swallowing how humanity's biggest construction project ever, the wall, was built against humans' own interests?  Huh, maybe it wasn't human labor primarily but magic leggos.)

 

For more success selling people on dragons being advanced gene science constructs, just don't use the word cars.  (That's what turned me off the first few times.) 

Dragon Magic Theory:

My unasked-for contribution is.....

why would the dragon makers go through all that trouble just for an extravagant ride, or even for a top of the line enforcer / tank/ monument to their godlike creation powers.  They wouldn't.  Not when, ostensibly, they'd have less messy options like a powerful wizard staff weapon that didn't leave huge turds, or a less dicey beast to have to interact with.  I think the dragonriding thing is just a lark the valyrians came up with millennia later because they had lion tamer personalities.  Maybe the original dragon makers were hoping the dragons were scary enough they wouldn't ever be tamed. 

 What i'm saying is the dragon's fierceness and body armor is the security system put in place to protect the more precious commodity within.  The portal.  "What feeds a dragon's fire?"  is the central mystery as pointed out by Marwyn, right?  Answer: they have built in direct access to the Otherworld source of magic and hellfire.  The dragons are vessels for mobile wi- fi portals through which magic flows outward and diffuses into Planetos for 100 or so miles of "full bars" coverage, but overlapping the whole world with magic.  The makers didn't want their magic power grid messed with by enemies.  It was a liability.  Theft, sabotage, portal abuse, magic outages as a prelude to invasion....  So they guarded their cellphone towers inside dragons.  The Others' inhospitable coldfront zone surrounds them and freezes out anybody trying to access their magic source , similarly cutting down on problems for them.  But....now that dragons have been tamed.....a huge potential exists for mortals to access and exploit the treasure trove of godly potential the dragonmakers wanted to keep out of our hands forever.

Yes, the implication is that the 14 volcanic plumes of old Valyria were naked singularities of this sort, or open portals not contained within dragon vessels but available to be used by mages industrially--but these were also vulnerable to, well, Doom (sabotage).

Well?   What What?   Not an instant classic?  Oh well.  I understand.

Hey. That Dragonmasters thing of Vance's would explain why westeros seems caught in a real rut for the last 10,000 years.  The same cyclical dark ages shit from the same ruling families forever.  That phenomenon does make you shake your head and wonder why westeros never evolves past that cycle of near identical violence.   ...Cuz dragon- induced mental haze!!!

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

That was some exaspiration over how much of what we "know" is still totally up in the air.

 

This God's Eye business is fun to ponder.  I'm familiar with norse apples as god-sustaining food, and the greek version of the apples, but the arthur apple isle is new to me and looks like the most direct corollary?   What do you see happening when the starved 'gods ' arrive there.  Will the Others reverse-age as if they've just applied the best revitalizing skin cream ever?   (seriously.)    It's long been wondered whether Bran travels back in time via the tree portal to be the Builder bran.   The downside is this opens the way for Jon to be Other #1, night king, 3EC, whatever.   So That's a big "yea!... booo!"

I know nothing! Nothing! (Colonel Klink voice)

I'm skeptical the Others will get to the Gods Eye.  It's been five books and they haven't made it across the Wall!  My instincts say Winterfell is the final battle, because of that dead dragon thing I've been plugging for ten pages, but also, logistically, for time reasons.  The Long Night will reach the Gods Eye but it would take another few years at the Other's glacial pace to get there (do they even have a map? Lol) and I'm assuming things will be coming together and speeding up (unless Martin's really off-pace) in the next book.

There are a number of Avalon corollaries in the series. Avalon is a sacred isle where Arthur goes after he dies and from where he'll be reborn. In our own myths, Avalon is considered to be quite a few places so Martin plays with a few of them.  But he gave us his 'first'  retrofitted version in the World Book, the floating palace of the Fisher Queens in the Silver Sea, and the First Men apparently came from that area.  So he's simultaneously giving us a fantasy fiction ancestor in the Fisher Kings from Arthuriana, from where he draws inspiration for Westeros culture and mythos, and an actual ancestral in-text history for the First Men with particular emphasis on that most Arthurian purple family the Daynes.

The God's Eye fits, therefore, a sacred island surrounded by water.  

But a surprising Avalon is also The Quiet Isle.  Avalon in our own myth is often conflated with the Isle of the Blessed in Hades in Greek myth because it's where heroes went and were reborn.  The Quiet Isle's description, right down to the apples, matches the description of Avalon/Isle of the Blessed version, so it's no accident Brienne travels through hell to get there, and there's a reborn hero, Clegane, in residence. I wonder about every single person on that island!  Greywater Watch,  floating around in its marsh, will likely be another Avalon.  

A very hidden Avalon is actually Winterfell.  It's also surrounded by water, the hot springs on which it sits but also the water pumped through its walls.  This one is interesting, because the real King Arthur was supposedly buried at Glastonbury, another Avalon; his bones were even dug up there. This is not the Isle of Apple's version but the Isle of Glass version.  There are glass greenhouses at Winterfell.  There is even an apple when she's in residence - Sansa is a type of Apple.  I suspect very much the Last Hero is buried at Winterfell, hence the focus on its crypts, to be reborn in Jon, or to actually rise again, with dragon of course.  King Arthur's family weren't called the Pendragons for nothing!

Here's an interesting tidbit.  When the supposedly real King Arthur was dug up and reburied at Glastonbury, the reburial was presided over by the very real Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England.  George said once that if we wanted to imagine good queen Alysanne, the one who visits the Wall, we should imagine her as Eleanor of Aquitaine as she appears in the movie, The Lion in Winter.

So I don't think I can be blamed for wondering if the Targs had info about that Last Hero pre-ancestor and if Alysanne went to Winterfell to mess around in the crypts!

This is just a very brief summary with few examples, but I wanted to point out that the God's Eye might be modeled on Avalon, but needn't be a focal point for that reason because it is only one of many Avalons represented in the texts.

[Lady Barbrey]

3 hours ago, hiemal said:

It throws me how often we seem to be like Mike and Ike.

How do see the settlement of Tarth in relationship with the founding of Starfall and the re-immigration Westrward. The names involved are simply too suggestive. A golden dragon for more info on Morne! Morne/Dorne/Dawn... Starfall/Evenfall/Evenstar/Venus/Lucifer...  Darkstar?

 

You won't like the answer because it's more Arthuriana, not magic, and has to do with Brienne, the Just Maid (of course she's the Just Maid, just like Arthur Dayne is the Sword of the Morning- Dawn).  No anti-Lightbringer here, just two different heroic heritages engaged in different fights.

One fight, in the King Arthur tradition, is to amalgamate and save the land - physically - from invaders.  Main players: Jon, Dany and Tyrion

The other fight, in the Galahad/Lancelot/Percival tradition, is to find the grail and heal the land, through the person of the Fisher King (Hoster, maybe Lady Stoneheart, but ultimately Bran). This is the spiritual fight and the one likely to restore the seasons because its emphasis is not on physically saving but on healing.  Main players: Jaime, Brienne and Bran. Jaime, like Lancelot, can only go so far with the quest, it will be left to Brienne, like Galahad, to complete it. What I like about this if it carried through to fruition?  Bran might get his legs back.

The Grail quest doesn't gather steam until Camelot's twilight.  Brienne is the evenstar, a hero of the twilight of Westeros, with a new morne on the horizon.

Until Darkstar fu*ks it all up!

Lol.  Take it for what you will but that's my interpretation. At least some of my unspoken ideas have found a home on this forum somewhere.

Now you have carte blanche to tell me why Just Maid or any other sword is an anti-Lightbringer and I hope the reason is magical!  Cause I'm way off topic!

 

 

 

 

 

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Best post ever?   Beautiful deep dive as usual, but especially solid on top of that.

So in your view, Bloodraven isn't a special standout in history from prior CotF greenseers but just more of the same, another slave to the weir who we shouldn't expect any unique historical accomplishments from, as readers might be hoping for.   In fact, Bran will need to be rescued from Bloodraven by the Others so he can become more than a slavedriver and be shown instead some useful way his powers can be used to aid humanity?   

Awww.  Another sad change would be the living weirwood gate under the Wall is no longer a wonderful mystery hinting at a time of better understanding between humans, Children and Trees.  Now, in light of your view, that doorway becomes a horrifying sign that the nightswatch & its wall have always been working for the vicious antihuman trees to help keep the freedom-fighting Others imprisoned.   (I'm having a bit of difficulty swallowing how humanity's biggest construction project ever, the wall, was built against humans' own interests?  Huh, maybe it wasn't human labor primarily but magic leggos.)

 

For more success selling people on dragons being advanced gene science constructs, just don't use the word cars.  (That's what turned me off the first few times.) 

Dragon Magic Theory:

My unasked-for contribution is.....

why would the dragon makers go through all that trouble just for an extravagant ride, or even for a top of the line enforcer / tank/ monument to their godlike creation powers.  They wouldn't.  Not when, ostensibly, they'd have less messy options like a powerful wizard staff weapon that didn't leave huge turds, or a less dicey beast to have to interact with.  I think the dragonriding thing is just a lark the valyrians came up with millennia later because they had lion tamer personalities.  Maybe the original dragon makers were hoping the dragons were scary enough they wouldn't ever be tamed. 

 What i'm saying is the dragon's fierceness and body armor is the security system put in place to protect the more precious commodity within.  The portal.  "What feeds a dragon's fire?"  is the central mystery as pointed out by Marwyn, right?  Answer: they have built in direct access to the Otherworld source of magic and hellfire.  The dragons are vessels for mobile wi- fi portals through which magic flows outward and diffuses into Planetos for 100 or so miles of "full bars" coverage, but overlapping the whole world with magic.  The makers didn't want their magic power grid messed with by enemies.  It was a liability.  Theft, sabotage, portal abuse, magic outages as a prelude to invasion....  So they guarded their cellphone towers inside dragons.  The Others' inhospitable coldfront zone surrounds them and freezes out anybody trying to access their magic source , similarly cutting down on problems for them.  But....now that dragons have been tamed.....a huge potential exists for mortals to access and exploit the treasure trove of godly potential the dragonmakers wanted to keep out of our hands forever.

Yes, the implication is that the 14 volcanic plumes of old Valyria were naked singularities of this sort, or open portals not contained within dragon vessels but available to be used by mages industrially--but these were also vulnerable to, well, Doom (sabotage).

Well?   What What?   Not an instant classic?  Oh well.  I understand.

Hey. That Dragonmasters thing of Vance's would explain why westeros seems caught in a real rut for the last 10,000 years.  The same cyclical dark ages shit from the same ruling families forever.  That phenomenon does make you shake your head and wonder why westeros never evolves past that cycle of near identical violence.   ...Cuz dragon- induced mental haze!!!

I hope in real life you are a writer.  And OB too. Really. Here's me blabbing seriously on about Avalon and Daynes, and there's you and OB and sometimes hiemal with your aliens, portals, dragon space cars, internal wi fi, evil trees and even if I lift an eyebrow It's entertaining and, stripped down, remotely possible.  Good style.

[hiemal]

7 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

You won't like the answer because it's more Arthuriana, not magic, and has to do with Brienne, the Just Maid (of course she's the Just Maid, just like Arthur Dayne is the Sword of the Morning- Dawn).  No anti-Lightbringer here, just two different heroic heritages engaged in different fights.

Sounds good to me so far. An anti-Lightbringer might, by definition, be non-magical. The Daynish exodus could have been to preserve their purity?

7 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

 

One fight, in the King Arthur tradition, is to amalgamate and save the land - physically - from invaders.  Main players: Jon, Dany and Tyrion

Absolutely.

7 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

The other fight, in the Galahad/Lancelot/Percival tradition, is to find the grail and heal the land, through the person of the Fisher King (Hoster, maybe Lady Stoneheart, but ultimately Bran). This is the spiritual fight and the one likely to restore the seasons because its emphasis is not on physically saving but on healing.  Main players: Jaime, Brienne and Bran. Jaime, like Lancelot, can only go so far with the quest, it will be left to Brienne, like Galahad, to complete it. What I like about this if it carried through to fruition?  Bran might get his legs back.

The Grail quest doesn't gather steam until Camelot's twilight.  Brienne is the evenstar, a hero of the twilight of Westeros, with a new morne on the horizon.

Until Darkstar fu*ks it all up!

Lol.  Take it for what you will but that's my interpretation. At least some of my unspoken ideas have found a home on this forum somewhere.

That makes a lot of sense.

Now you have carte blanche to tell me why Just Maid or any other sword is an anti-Lightbringer and I hope the reason is magical!  Cause I'm way off topic!

7 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Now you have carte blanche to tell me why Just Maid or any other sword is an anti-Lightbringer and I hope the reason is magical!  Cause I'm way off topic!

 

We're pretty close to being on the same page, although I would like to bring up that I think echoes of Florian and Jonquil in Brienne and Jaime.

Quote

"At Maidenpool, Lord Mooton's red salmon still flew above the castle on its hill, but the town walls were deserted, the gates smashed, half the homes and shops burned or plundered. They saw nothing living but a few feral dogs that went slinking away at the sound of their approach. The pool from which the town took its name, where legend said that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing with her sisters, was so choked with rotting corpses that the water had turned into a murky grey-green soup.

Jaime took one look and burst into song. "Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool . . ."

"What are you doing?" Brienne demanded."

ASoS

Quote

After the second time he fell from the saddle, they bound him tight to Brienne of Tarth and made them share a horse again. One day, instead of back to front, they bound them face-to-face. "The lovers," Shagwell sighed loudly, "and what a lovely sight they are. 'Twould be cruel to separate the good knight and his lady." Then he laughed that high shrill laugh of his, and said, "Ah, but which one is the knight and which one is the lady?"

ASoS

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

On 10/23/2018 at 7:27 PM, The Mother of The Others said:

It was working fine, the characters from ASOIAF as modern day stand- ins for the original empire bunch.  Then you had to....then you said the Mountain was a spaceship. ....

 

Weir Origin Theory That Explains The World Entirely (w.o.t.t.e.w.e.):

Hey, for simplicity's sake, why not just say the pale weirwoods are the alien-uplifted trees who remained loyal to the God on Earth and his more humane rule, evidenced by how they run their weir afterlife as an open system, like a meritocracy for any souls strong enough to grab the brass ring and live on.  Whereas the ebony weirwoods fell sway to the BSE's repressive dictatorship over souls that slammed the door shut on freedom in the afterlife.  Under him, the pharaoh system was used, with only 'gods' being worthy to log into the weirnet.  Dark trees hunted white weirs extinct on Essos and even now work to bring the BSE's will to bear on "our" weirwoods, which is why the land bridge had to be blown up.   

#NoPearlMothershipForever

But if you allow me to immediately blow up any and all spaceships upon their arrival to the planet and have their debris = dragonglass, then I'll allow alien origin.  Maybe.  On probation!   This would fit with how their Empire was unsustainable.  They were weakening with each emperor, as in they were running low on the shit from their homeworld that made them godlike.  Then, limited resources became an ethical dilemma, and the BSE was the one whose shallow soul caved in and he went vampire rather than suffer a further drop in his standard of living.  He would no longer take the high road of self sacrifice and decided the world's vitality should be sacrificed for his own ascendance to dark glory.

There is evidence that a faction of the weirwood did want peace with humans and remained loyal towards the God on Earth: 

"All Dorne will howl," said Doran Martell in a tired voice. "I only pray Lord Tywin hears them in King's Landing, so he might know what a loyal friend he has in Sunspear."  . . .

"Prince Doran frowned. "That is so, Ser Balon, but the Lady Nym is right. If ever a man deserved to die screaming, it was Gregor Clegane. He butchered my good sister, smashed her babe's head against a wall. I only pray that now he is burning in some hell, and that Elia and her children are at peace. This is the justice that Dorne has hungered for. I am glad that I lived long enough to taste it. At long last the Lannisters have proved the truth of their boast and paid this old blood debt."

But the weirwood networks of Westeros and Essos are both a yin-yang of dark and light, part hates humanity and part loves it:

"Oberyn was ever the viper. Deadly, dangerous, unpredictable. No man dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, complaisant, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the viper from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes. "  . . .

But the human-loving side is sick and dying, and the vengeful side is young and strong:

"A start?" said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. "Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end?"

"It ends in blood, as it began," said Lady Nym. "It ends when Casterly Rock is cracked open, so the sun can shine on the maggots and the worms within. It ends with the utter ruin of Tywin Lannister and all his works."

The blood vendetta side wins out and destroys the God on Earth and Great Empire and all his works.  (this is the same story as the Grey King and his works being destroyed by the Storm God).

As you say, in Westeros the trees lean towards producing a society with more freedoms, whereas in Essos they lean towards slavery "Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. . . beat of the rotting heart."  That Essos weirwood/human symbiote that was the House of the Undying was seriously sick, and Dany burns it to the ground, she clears out a weirwood castle.  The attitude of the weirwood (and the face carved on it) reflects the treatment they have received.
 

 

In the Men of Greywater Station they are discussing the fungus that is attacking them and they say "we can't understand it, we don't know its formative experiences"

Quote

A total assault, with the life of a planet working for our destruction. It’s the fungus…a total ecology, as Ned likes to call it. A classic case of the parasitic collective mind. But we can’t understand it. We don’t know what its basic precepts are, its formative experiences. We don’t know. No research has been carried out on anything like it. Except maybe the water jellies of Noborn. But that was a collective organism formed of separate colonies for mutual benefit. A benign form, as it were. As far as I can tell, Greywater, the fungus, is a single all-encompassing mass, which took over this planet starting from some single central point.” He rubbed his hands together and nodded. “Yes. Based on that, we can make guesses as to what it thinks. And how it will act. And this fits, this total hostility.”
“How so?” asked Sanderpay.
“Well, it’s never run up against any other intelligence, you see. Only lower forms. That’s important. So it judges us by itself, the only mind it has known. It is driven to dominate, to take over all life with which it comes in contact. So it thinks we are the same, fears that we are trying to take over this planet as it once did.

The Westeros and Essos weirwood's formative experience was that humans attacked it first, we violated the nonaggression principle, and so the weirwood was justified in totally wrecking our civilization.  It has been vampirically feeding off us ever since, and meddling with society to make sure we never rise to become a real threat to them again.
 

The Summer Isles show a weirwood (goldenheart) with a different formative experience, a version of the human/weirwood symbiosis that could have been--there humans there live in harmony with the trees, and the trees care for the humans and protect them. 

Quote

the mysterious island of Naath, known to the ancients as the Isle of Butterflies. The people native to the island are a beautiful and gentle race, with round flat faces, dusky skin, and large, soft amber eyes, oft flecked with gold. The Peaceful People, the Naathi are called by seafarers, for they will not fight even in defense of their homes and persons. The Naathi do not kill, not even beasts of the field and wood; they eat fruit, not flesh, and make music, not war.

The god of Naath is called the Lord of Harmony, oft shown as a laughing giant, bearded and naked, always attended by swarms of slender maidens with butterfly wings. A hundred varieties of butterflies flitter about the island; the Naathi revere them as messengers of the Lord, charged with the protection of his people. Mayhaps there is some truth to these legends, for whilst the docile nature of the Naathi seem to make their island ripe for conquest, strangers from beyond the sea do not live long upon the Isle of Butterflies.

For much of their recorded history, they lived in isolation from the rest of mankind. Their earliest maps, as carved into the famous Talking Trees of Tall Trees Town, show no lands but the isles themselves, surrounded by a vast world-spanning ocean.

 

Wars on the Summer Isles seldom last longer than a day, and do no harm to any but the warriors themselves. No crops are destroyed, no homes are put to the torch, no cities are sacked, no children are harmed, no women are raped (though warrior women oft fight beside their men in the line of battle). Even the defeated princes suffer neither death nor disfigurement though they must leave their homes and palaces to spend the remainder of their days in exile.

Though Jhala is the largest of the Summer Isles, Walano is the most populous. There can be found Last Lament, with its great harbor, sleepy Lotus Point, and sun-dappled Tall Trees Town, where priestesses in feathered robes carve songs and stories into the trunks of the enormous tower trees that shade the town. On these Talking Trees can be read the whole history of the Summer Islanders, together with the commandments of their many gods and the laws by which they live their lives.

Whilst Jhala, Walano, and Omboru dominate the archipelago, a number of the smaller isles are worthy of mention.

 

Missandei had told her of the Lord of Harmony, worshiped by the Peaceful People of Naath; he was the only true god, her little scribe said, the god who always was and always would be, who made the moon and stars and earth, and all the creatures that dwelt upon them. Poor Lord of Harmony. Dany pitied him. It must be terrible to be alone for all time, attended by hordes of butterfly women you could make or unmake at a word. Westeros had seven gods at least, though Viserys had told her that some septons said the seven were only aspects of a single god, seven facets of a single crystal. That was just confusing. The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

 

The little scribe with the big golden eyes was wise beyond her years. She is brave as well. She had to be, to survive the life she's lived. One day she hoped to see this fabled isle of Naath. Missandei said the Peaceful People made music instead of war. They did not kill, not even animals; they ate only fruit and never flesh. 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.

I think George is sort of an anarcho-primitivist and thinks humans should only live in small tribes at peace with nature (see And Seven Times Never Kill Man), which I agree with, and that large scale societies, no matter how well-built or well-intentioned will fall into decay--that is the tale of the collapse of the Great Empire--it was perfectly designed, but as soon as its creator was gone, it started to fall apart.  That is one of the themes of The Stone City also, a great civilization was built by a great people, but the builders are gone now, and the great structures they built are now occupied by vastly inferior creatures--the insane foxmen. 

The Summer Islanders are very similar to the Jaenshi from Seven Times, and the Jaenshi are a reference to people who practice Jainism.  The Summer Islanders and Jaenshi are vegetarians, live at peace with nature in small settlements, and have golden eyes, and are protected by their gods.  I think George thinks this is the ideal form of human society, and the only sustainable one.

Jains believe that violence against another living creature destroys and corrupts the soul.

The Sanskrit word nātha means "lord, protector" and Nath is a sect of Hinduism that is influenced by Buddhism.

nathi is also a fruit called the goldenberry (ie, the Naathi people are the golden fruit of the goldenheart tree?)
 

 

 

In Sandkings, the bugs have different colors to show their political affiliations and they build castles to house their maw, and the castles are carved with the face of their god--their owner Kress.  The Whites are western, capitalist, and christian, the black are totalitarians, the reds are communists, and the orange are libertarians (or Buddhists, in Buddhism orange was the colour of illumination, the highest state of perfection).  Their god Kress torments them, and they turn against one another.  Kress tries to kill the white maw, he stabs it, it survives but becomes insane.   Shortly thereafter he begins getting psychic suggestions to feed the white maw human flesh and it begins to control his actions.  He wipes out the blacks and the reds.

"Listen to me. This is your own doing. Keep your sandkings well, and they are courtly ritual warriors. You turned yours into something else, with starvation and torture. You were their god. You made them what they are. That maw in your cellar is sick, still suffering from the wound you gave it. It is probably insane. Its behavior is . . . unusual."

"That white sandking is going to waken to full sentience soon. It is not going to need you any longer, and it hates you, and it will be very hungry."

The only maw to survive to the end is the orange one, and it eats its god Kress.  I think this is George saying that the only political philosophy that is sustainable long-term is a small-scale Buddhist, atheist, libertarian state.

This fits with my theory that And Seven Times Never Kill Man is a metaphor for Chinese Communists invading Tibet and destroying Tibetan Monasteries.  The Steel Angels' uniforms are described just like the People's Liberation Army uniforms.  George thinks, (or hopes) that in the end, a Buddhist philosophy will prevail.

 

Also, in Sandkings deep cold puts the maws into hibernation and they avoid frozen food, that might have implications for ASOIAF, maybe the Others can put the weirwoods back to sleep when they get too excited?  And the trees can't absorb frozen blood.

But you better get on board with this black spaceship, it is the only way to have repeated, long-term eclipses.

Both the BSE and the Other's are only powerful when it is dark outside.  As long as the Long Night continued, he was impossible to defeat--he had control over the network and was a very powerful sorcerer, the only way to end his rule was to get that spaceship out of eclipse formation.  The Last Hero arises, he is a powerful warg, and with the childrens' help (and the faction of the weirwood that wants to help humans) he wargs the Red Comet and blasts the spaceship out of eclipse, ending the Long Night and the reign of the Bloodstone Emperor.

[The Mother of The Others]

4 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

 deep cold puts maws into hibernation.  that might have implications for ASOIAF.  maybe the Others can put the weirwoods back to sleep when they get too excited?  And the trees can't absorb frozen blood.

That's huge.  (Yes, this site is starting to replace porn).   

That gives the Others a never ending heroic fireman job , a reluctant mission to stay behind the wall and spray liquid nitrogen on the terminators forever to keep a warzone inert, frozen in time (presumably because we were losing to a scary degree before Others took on this quarantine responsibility.)    So the heart of winter is where they concentrate these efforts... so that'd be the crash site of the main meteor of whatever inflames the trees to madness.  

(Maybe the Others even signed on by choice for their first tour of duty, but then someone locked them in and threw away the key??  And now the Watch isn't supposed to father children... so they don't help the monster Others replace their ranks?  So the white walkers must look to Craster for tiny recruits, cuz the night king thing was a bust...involving a new tactic for trying to seduce the Watch, but also featuring the Others venting their rage at humanity for leaving them to twist in the cold wind for so long??   Or....was their nightmare assault on Men during the long night aimed at trying to harvest one big crop of human "recruits" so they'd have the manpower to keep the trees frozen for another 1,000 years! 

(Since they suffer a tougher time finding new recruits than even the nightswatch, they saw this move as prudent/necessary, thanks to the stupid Watch forgetting who the true enemy was...or the watch fell prey to bad trees' influence. 

Speaking of which, would there have been a bunch of sane weirwoods cooperating with us and the Cotf as they all panicked upon seeing an outbreak of madness spreading and taking hold in more and more of their tree brethren, those exposed to this substance from deep space?   Or am I being silly because bloodthirst is what first made the trees aware, so they'd all share that hunger. 

Eh, some trees might have been taught mercy by the kind souls plugged into their roots.  Shared Consciousness is a two way street after all.  Maybe the Essos trees send out a crappy vibe due to the low caliber of person plugged into them , such as the Undying  (there's your formative event for tree attitudes).   The Children would have far more success being a positive influence on the trees, so even if the weir were natively vampiric they'd mellow into that stereotypical vampire who drinks only pigs' blood and has a conscience.   

THEN...when the heart of winter landed, and its dense hate drug material leached down into the water table, the trees who drank it in were overcome with the vampiric curse and their symbiotic bipeds lost control, and lost their minds, which filtered into the weirnet to infect the children, who started fresh cycles of blood sacrifices like uncivilized throwbacks .....so any multi- species cooperative effort fell apart and confusion and panic reigned.

Permafrost !  Would help slow the spread though the water table!  More snow, Others!  And the most extreme method to stop its spread:  Long Winter!!!!!!  time freezing.  Aka magical seasons and messing with time!

 OMG, all this icing down of weirs is why Bloodraven was drafted by the trees..... if Bloodraven is the one adding the magic ward to keep dead and cold things away from his weir grove, that'd keep his tree unfrozen and stirring despite efforts to hose it down!   An evolutionary advantage, Jim.

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But you better get on board with this black spaceship, it is the only way to have repeated, long-term eclipses

Yeah, i'm working the problem like a pornstar.  And.....solved:  we already have The Shadow of Ass High, even during low magic tide, right?  So at high tide someone just extends that curtain of night further.  And then all the way, baby, yeah.  No spaceship required.

 

De-Human-Icing Origin of Monsters Theory- -

Oh, and if Others were people Otherized into existence for this purpose, wouldn't it also stand to reason that no dragon "species" exists either?  All dragons came from people who were transformed.  Just as the Targs have been saying out loud nonstop, really.  The dragons (the scaly kind) who then lay eggs haven't really reproduced.  It's not an independent species from humanity, because to quicken the egg you gotta burn somebody in the human realm.  Human soul sacrifice, transfer, and then you get a "dragon".   But you might as well call Drogon Drogo cuz thatz whoz in there.

 

 Speaking of dragons and fire blood, how can Danny and Jon have any kind of positive effect on this situation ?  (where cold maintains the stalemate and heat can seemingly only bring doom to humanity by quickening the spread of the cthulu problem.)    Tough to see the potential for resolution.   Yet that nice man Rheagar gave us his word that if we only give this combo blood thing a chance, we'd see something nifty.  Huh.  Waiting.

[The Sleeper]

There is the danger of too much information and too much specificity running counter-productive to how Martin is using magic in Song. It would destroy the mystery. On the other hand too much mystery and it runs the risk of coming out like an ass pull and a blatant plot device. So while I think he has some ideas of how it works, he doesn't necessarily need an overhanging framework just some concepts about the magic seen most often in the series in order to provide some consistency. For the most part we have gotten what we need to know with the only area needing to be fleshed out a little more being the whole business with the previous and coming Long Night.

And on that note, making a complete departure of what I just said, let me leave planet earth and launch into my own crackpot. 

Generally we've been shown that magic is dangerous, unreliable and comes at a price. Other than that I would say that, focusing on the most relevant in the narrative, we can seperate magical effects into tangible and intangible. Of the first kind we have manipulation of the elements, most prominently arranging for a favorable wind and of course necromancy along with glamors and of the latter we have all manners of prophesies, prophetic dreams, skinchangers and greenseers. As all these effects are produced through various different systems and means, I am convinced that if magic is not one then at the very least it intersects. That and because Jojen said so. All manner of divination, clairvoyance, skinchanging and greenseeing, could be thought off as extra-sensory perception/ out-of-body experience, making them all manifestations of the same power or ability in different degrees, purposes and magnitudes. The various Targs, Jojen, Nymella Toland, Maggy the Frogg and various fortune tellers and wood witches can steal glimpses of the future, past and distant places, skinchangers make brigdes between their consciousness and that of other living beings and on the top end of the spectrum we have Bran and the users of glass candles who have complete freedom and control over that ability. Or in Bran's case he will when he gets far enough along in this training. I believe that his visions after his fall were a sneak preview of what he will be able to do at will, eventually. The impression I had of them that he could see across both space and time as well as in the hearts of things. 

I would like to draw a parallel between Bran's coma vision and Dany at the house of the Undying. One thing that never made sense to me is why have Dany go through all that if they meant to eat her, especially as there appeared to be a good chance that she would not reach them. The only answer is that they did not have a choice in the matter. My first thought was that the Undying themselves were trapped there. My second was that it was that the whole place is a fortification. In either case it seems that they are not able to exit it or have much control over it. This would suggest that they can only exist there. And that place was much like Bran's vision with the exception that Dany was physically there along with Drogon and walking through it. It makes me wonder what would have happened had she walked through one of the doors she came across along the way. This has always drawn my attention not only because of it importance in Dany's arc but because it was by far and probably still is the most explicit magic in the series. 

Until we get to Tyrion in Dance and the Bridge of Dreams where for no apparent reason space and time seemed to get whimsical again for no apparent reason and we hear great leather wings beating. Something actually flying there, or perhaps an echo of something long past, or maybe a reference of something happening much more recently which also involved a dragon? It was there that Garin watched the destruction of his city and laid his curse (we are told) on the invading Valyrians. A lot of magic and a lot of death and time goes wonky. Hmm. 

Lost in legend but perhaps in the same vein, in Westeros in the Whispers Clarence Crabb's witch wife reanimated the heads of his vanquished foes and in the Nightfort the Night's King sacrificed to the Others. And what do these places have in common? Young weirwoods. Legends perhaps, but they relate of places where death, magic and necromancy took place. And thus we come back to Bran where the last greenseer resides beneath a grove of weirwoods which perhaps unsurprisingly has grown over a vast graveyard. There we are told that weirwoods themselves are immortal and stand outside time and hold within themselves everything they have seen and maybe will see and the memories and knowledge of all that had gone into them. The whole chapter itself is written in a dreamlike quality that time itself becomes ambiguous and Bran himself sees across time into the past and communes with his father. Leaf warns him against calling out to his father and phrases the warning as not to seek to call him back from death, which I find telling. 

The other prominent magic in A Song of Ice and Fire is necromancy. The dead were raised in the very first chapter after all. What has been hinted at but not explicitly stated yet is that other than raising the dead, it is also possible and in fact has happened quite a lot is communing with them. That is why I find Leaf's phrasing interesting. Not because it would be impossible, or that it would change the past but because it would raise him from the dead, perhaps in spirit or in body. In fact I am increasingly convinced that the necromancy we have seen is precisely that calling forth the dead person's spirit to reanimate his body. This ties with glamor. Melisandre told us that a person's effects can be used to weave that person's form  and we see that Arya through her blood and the ugly girl's skin to take her shape and share in her memories. If a whole body is available the shade of a person can be called forth and reanimate that person's body.

I think this essential to magic in Song. For lack of better term let's say there is a veil beyond which is the backstage of reality where time and space becomes meaningless. The intangible acts of magic occur when individuals either through innate ability or through various means see across the veil. The various seers take peaks and glimpse facts they have no business of knowing, skinchangers hop and land in other bodies and greenseers leave their bodies entirely and roam at will. This also could provide the blueprint for the rest of magic is supposed to work. The counterpart of reaching across time into the past if one were not say a greenseer would be memory whether recorded but in this case mostly evoked through artifacts and body parts. So the form of a person can be called and a person's body can be animated. Death itself being a transition where a person becomes memory could be seen as piercing the veil and calling it back the person's echo and memory to animate the person's corpse could be seen as that as well. The rest of magic could be seen as a person's will made manifest or by reverting to the Children's animism as shaping the elements. To stay with the veil analogy the more it is pierced the easier it would be to do so. Magic and death and particularly a combination of the two pierce the veil and if done so repeatedly in the same locale for a period of time one gets a hole in reality where it becomes untangled, maleble and chaotic, much like the greenseer see it when they do their thing. As magic would become easier to perform around such a hole it would cause a cascade. I think one such hole is the house of the Undying, perhaps dug in purpose, but in any case used to make the existence of the Undying possible, augment their power and knowledge and as defence from their enemies. I can't say it worked out well for them. The Bridge of Dreams is another such area where if reality is not cracked precisely it is frayed and Garin's curse has taken the form of a decease that persists a thousand years past. I also think that the Doom of Valyria was caused by such an effect and much like radiation it causes mutations a long distance away and the Heart of Winter is a giant hole through which the world's heat is bleeding out.

The weirwoods themselves would be a species that feeds and grows on magic and thus takes root in such holes or cracks. They are immortal, hold the memories of those it has grown on and its wood appears to have many magical properties. The black trees that produce the shade of the evening would be similar in that they take root in or near cracks but I think they are opposites to weirwoods. Apart from the coloration when Bran ate the paste he went into the trees, whereas shade of the evening has the effect of those who drink becoming unstuck in reality, their minds at least or maybe even their bodies. I tend to think that weirwoods are like scabs in reality while the black trees spread the instability. 

That it is my own personal crackpot of how magic works in ASoIaF. The rest more or less fit in there. I don't expect much of it to be the case or that we will be told about it, but I also don't think I am far off regarding the broad strokes.