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[spoilers] Aerea


Lord Varys

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Now these things thrived in Aerea's body and they in cold. So, these "worms" love a hot body temperature. The body's response to alien bugs infesting you is to raise the body temperature. But the hotter the better for these worms. So, this seems to have been a cycle of the body trying to kill the infestation by raising the body temperature, while that only served the infestation to have a huge partay, until eventually Aerea was so burning hot that her skin actually started to burn and crackle.

I'm not saying you're wrong here(because you aren't), but from a strictly biological perspective, Aerea would have died of starvation long before her body could burn enough calories to actually create smoke. I believe the worms were inducing a response from her inherent dragonlord nature, ramping up her internal magic to the point where she couldn't handle it (lots of RL diseases take advantage of the direct immune response). They drive her magic out of whack, they feed off the heat that she creates. Its possible that the Dragonlords created these things as symbiotes in an attempt to acclimatize themselves to greater levels of heat or augment their pyromancy, but the experiments themselves were incomplete when the doom occured. Alternatively, the worms could have been conceived as a method of torture given their pyromaniac tendencies. 

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36 minutes ago, HamSandLich said:

Silverwing won't cross the Wall, Jon's Warg bond with ghost is disrupted when they're on opposite sides, the Others' necromancy doesn't raise those who die south of the Wall(though if Crows bring over wights on their own, they still function, but they gradually lose function the further they are from the Wall), Coldhands can't cross.

Tangentially, Brandon the Builder apocryphally was the architect for Storms End, which explicitly won't let Melisandre's shadowbinding cross its walls.

And yet she can see Brandon and Bloodraaven in her flames at Castle Black (south of the Wall). These are normal flames: not blue ones, not superhot ones... just a fire in a fireplace.

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In case of Aerea, we see deliberate mystery, and finger pointed at culprits other than the writer.

Benifer above all. But Barth and Jaehaerys were persuaded to participate - Barth in full knowledge, Jaehaerys without.

In case of Aerea, the worms died in the ice bath. None of the close contacts, Lucamore, Benifer and Barth, were damaged by it.

The decree to punish Westerosi who travel to Valyria with death and forbid landing to ships suspected of visiting Valyria or Smoking Sea was never discussed in Small Council. Stupid. Small Council input on how best to enforce and publicise it should have been requested.

The Shivers epidemy was ahead, but there had been a previous Shivers epidemy... breaking out in ports. In 37 BC, an epidemy of Red Death had killed 9 out of 10 in Gogossos and rest of Basilisk Isles, and surviving tenth had fled. Benifer and Barth could fear, and justify the fear to Jaehaerys, that someone stupid and brave to enter Valyria might have the good luck to come back alive... and bad luck to return with some epidemy to Westeros.

But what could be best considered ways to discourage fools from trying to be heroes?

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6 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I've reread a couple of times. First thing of note is that these "worms with faces and hands" didn't attempt to leave Aerea's body until she was put into the bath and her heart had given away. Once they came out they died because of the ice they ended up trying to escape towards. And the second thing is how her body heated up so over the top that she started to smoke and burn from the inside out.

 

My thought was that just weren't "done" yet (and probably never would be- these were mad things that weren't meant to be trying to break the barriers of reality) but I see where you are going...

8 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I've reread a couple of times. First thing of note is that these "worms with faces and hands" didn't attempt to leave Aerea's body until she was put into the bath and her heart had given away. Once they came out they died because of the ice they ended up trying to escape towards. And the second thing is how her body heated up so over the top that she started to smoke and burn from the inside out.

What are we sure of with Valyrian dragonlords: they have a high body temperature. It's why Alysanne didn't need to wear the thickest furs in Winterfell. It's how Dany can abide with bathing water so hot that would scald others. George has eplicitly said that despite the hatching of the dragons event, Dany is not actually fireproof. So, basically, dragonlords have a higher body temperature than other people, which gives them different responses to  various heat situations. Our normal body temperature is a little less than 37 ° C. We call having anything above that having a fever. If you have 38 °C you have a serious enough fever. Anything higher is alarming. Why do have fever? It's a body's reaction to an infection. Viruses and bacterias love our 37°C to multiply in. What happens if our temperature rises with a fever? The survival temperature of a lot of those bugs lies below that, and so they start to die. You can see "fever" as a defense reaction to basically cook those bugs to death. Now, if dragonlords already have a higher body temperature (comparable to our fever temperature), then you get why they tend to be immune to "normal diseases": their bodies are not a good survival habitat for those viruses. Only poison and magical diseases aren't bothered by the hotter body temperature of Targaryens, and to some extent bacterial infections.

 

That's a fascinating idea, and I'll need to think on it for a while, but I love its explanatory power of Targ disease resistance. I don't recall any mention of Dany being warm to the touch, however. and while I don't recall her complaining of chill she might have worn that big lion skin purely for sentimental reasons and keep bedmates solely for company and the occasional frolic.

12 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Now these things thrived in Aerea's body and they in cold. So, these "worms" love a hot body temperature. The body's response to alien bugs infesting you is to raise the body temperature. But the hotter the better for these worms. So, this seems to have been a cycle of the body trying to kill the infestation by raising the body temperature, while that only served the infestation to have a huge partay, until eventually Aerea was so burning hot that her skin actually started to burn and crackle.

They moved her to the ice tub, finally in an effort to cool her down (and indeed, some diseases need to be treated with cold baths, instead of piling up blankets, to bring the fever down). As hot as she was, her system couldn't handle the temperature difference, and so her heart stopped. Once it stopped, the worms pour out of her body (but not before). So, these creatures likely lived in her blood stream, in her vains... makes sense, since blood is the distributor of heat in our body.

If these worms thrive on heat, then Valyria after the doom makes for a paradise for them, and a dragon (fire made flesh) even a preferred host.

But I do agree that the "infestation" may already be part of the dragonlords since before the Doom, that it's some blood-binding of some alien fire creature that alraedy gave them these special abilities, but somehow with the Doom the magic that makes these two co-exist symbiotically goes completely haywire and help the worms gain the upper hand over their hosts' bodies.

And I'm also curious to what happens to someone who does not have Valyrian dragonlord blood in them. Euron's certainly an interesting case then (if he actually speaks the truth). If non dragonlord humans suffer similarly (they would die faster though), then it's not in the dragonlord blood.  If they don't, then the worms are alraedy part of the dragonlords since before the Doom.

Or at least the conditions that allow the infestation to happen, a magical "bargain" struck by the Valyrians that has now come home to roost.

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14 minutes ago, HamSandLich said:

I'm not saying you're wrong here(because you aren't), but from a strictly biological perspective, Aerea would have died of starvation long before her body could burn enough calories to actually create smoke. I believe the worms were inducing a response from her inherent dragonlord nature, ramping up her internal magic to the point where she couldn't handle it (lots of RL diseases take advantage of the direct immune response).

Yeah, true. Actually, these "hot" dragonlords, should be hungry a lot, since they're burning calories more. So, either they have magical digestive system that can get more calories out of food than a normal human being can, or the source of their elevated body temperature is not calories-in-take, but some magic component that is a source of heat: how about those worms?

And yup, some RL diseases do take advantage of the immune response and thrive on fever.

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3 minutes ago, HamSandLich said:

I'm not saying you're wrong here(because you aren't), but from a strictly biological perspective, Aerea would have died of starvation long before her body could burn enough calories to actually create smoke. I believe the worms were inducing a response from her inherent dragonlord nature, ramping up her internal magic to the point where she couldn't handle it (lots of RL diseases take advantage of the direct immune response). They drive her magic out of whack, they feed off the heat that she creates. Its possible that the Dragonlords created these things as symbiotes in an attempt to acclimatize themselves to greater levels of heat or augment their pyromancy, but the experiments themselves were incomplete when the doom occured. Alternatively, the worms could have been conceived as a method of torture given their pyromaniac tendencies. 

Nah. This is fire-wyrm-worm-whatever babies looking for a mother-host, and the ice killed them. It is a small, albeit torturous, point to re-emphasize the struggle between ice and fire. They could have been some mutant hybrid messup from old Valyria days, that is actually what I first thought as I read that as others did, but what they are in the story now is a struggle between ice and fire.

There is no perfect rhyme or reason to magic in this world. Much of it is personal choice... that ol' drink from the cup of ice or fire thingy. Sword or noose, and so on.

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2 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I don't recall any mention of Dany being warm to the touch, however.

Not many people get to touch her, and it may not seem a big difference to other people. If someone has a fever of 37.5°C I won't feel that by touch. We only notice someone's burning up from fever when it nears 38°C. That's usually when we become aware of having a fever ourselves: dryer lips, hot behind the eyes, hot dry feet and palms that bother us. If Dany's normal body temperature is 37.4 °C for example, it would barely be noticed, but it could make a significant difference regarding disease habitat and dealing with hot or cold environments.

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28 minutes ago, HamSandLich said:

For the Stone men thing, its a bit of a stretch. Its a condition with supernatural connotations that induces physiological change, the similarities begin and end there. You could say the same about lycanthropy(though it doesn't exist in ASOIAF) and the Stonemen are were-rocks. Sure, you can make the comparison, but its not a narrow comparison. Aerea's flesh wasn't transmuting into fire, her insides were being set on fire.

She wasn't being set on fire, there was no actual combustion and she continued to function long after her brain would have cooked- I'm not a doctor I'm pretty sure it would be well before her eyeballs burst even in someone as robust as a Targaryen. The onset of symptoms don't correspond to anything conventional but something about Barth's description made me think of the stonemen, who I don't think are actual rocks. If they were they would have gone thorugh that Shy Maid so hard she'd be a misnomer.

Quote

As for the Others, i'm of the opinion they're their own people, as the Giants and the CoTF and whatever the hell built the Seastone Chair.

TBH, so am I, but I was struck by what I see as possible parallels.

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2 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Not many people get to touch her, and it may not seem a big difference to other people. If someone has a fever of 37.5°C I won't feel that by touch. We only notice someone's burning up from fever when it nears 38°C. That's usually when we become aware of having a fever ourselves: dryer lips, hot behind the eyes, hot dry feet and palms that bother us. If Dany's normal body temperature is 37.4 °C for example, it would barely be noticed, but it could make a significant difference regarding disease habitat and dealing with hot or cold environments.

True- it just seems to be the most obvious first probing point.

Dany's sickness at the end of Dance could be tied to turning away from her targ nature, lowering her body temperature?

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1 minute ago, hiemal said:

True- it just seems to be the most obvious first probing point.

Dany's sickness at the end of Dance could be tied to turning away from her targ nature, lowering her body temperature?

It seems to be related to the berries she ate, aka poison. Poison doesn't care about body temperature, as long as it gets to get into an organ or tissue it can damage.

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21 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Nah. This is fire-wyrm-worm-whatever babies looking for a mother-host, and the ice killed them. It is a small, albeit torturous, point to re-emphasize the struggle between ice and fire. They could have been some mutant hybrid messup from old Valyria days, that is actually what I first thought as I read that as others did, but what they are in the story now is a struggle between ice and fire.

There is no perfect rhyme or reason to magic in this world. Much of it is personal choice... that ol' drink from the cup of ice or fire thingy. Sword or noose, and so on.

I was thinking something along those lines. Like, when Valyrians got their dragon blood or how dragons came into being. And these here are the first attempts that didn’t quite work but yet survived. 

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13 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

It seems to be related to the berries she ate, aka poison. Poison doesn't care about body temperature

Good point.

Do you think that it was because there were too many worms that Area's temperature went out of control? The worms collectively seem to be generating so much heat that I don't know what difference the few degrees seperating a dragonlord from normal men would make whereas the difference between a dragonlord and a dragon is far more significant.

Both the descriptions we have of Area mention things pushing against her skin, and they don't burst out until exposed to the cold this probing behaviour seems to promise that at some point they intended to.

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12 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I was thinking something along those lines. Like, when Valyrians got their dragon blood or how dragons came into being. And these here are the first attempts that didn’t quite work but yet survived. 

Well, there are accounts of wild dragons living apart from Valyria (as far north as Ib and as far south as Sothoryos), as well as the legends of Asshai stating that the Valyrians learned dragonlore from another race and that dragons originated in the Shadowlands.

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1 hour ago, HamSandLich said:

Silverwing won't cross the Wall, Jon's Warg bond with ghost is disrupted when they're on opposite sides, the Others' necromancy doesn't raise those who die south of the Wall(though if Crows bring over wights on their own, they still function, but they gradually lose function the further they are from the Wall), Coldhands can't cross.

Tangentially, Brandon the Builder apocryphally was the architect for Storms End, which explicitly won't let Melisandre's shadowbinding cross its walls.

Let's sum it up: the magics that don't work and the magics that do work

Warging/Skinchanging: not happening with the Wall between warg and wolf, supposedly.

Q1: if Varamyr had been able to get south of the Wall, would he have lost any sense of Orell's bird if it flew across the Wall.

Q2: if the wall prevents skinchanging, then how come Bloodraven and Bran skinchange for example Jeor's raven, or the two ravens in Theon's first chapter of tWoW (excerpt chapter)?

Dragons: not willing or able to cross the Wall: (either they fly against a magical barrier that extends beyond the wall, or the magic feels icy cold to a dragon.)

Q1: if one, then how come wildlings can cross a wall, or how come people can walk on the wall

Q2: is that solely for dragons or other magical creatures, or would Orell's bird also been prevented to cross

Q3: is a wall actually necessary then?

Necromancing: Others cannot wightify a dead person south of the wall. But if you bring a wight south, it remains a wight (until it rots).

Q1: How come a chewed off wight hand can rot to bones given enough time, while north of the wall it requires Summer to crack the marrow. Is that distance or heat differences?

Q: if the magic can keep a dragon from flying over, then will Others be able to cross if the Wall falls?

Coldhands: can't cross, not even through the Gate for which he knows the words.

Q1: Could living humans carry him through the wall's gate and tunnel at Castle Black as they did with Othor and Jafer?

Q2: is it just the magical weirwood gate that wouldn't let him pass?

Greenseeing: done by Bran and Bloodraven from a cave leagues north of the wall, and yet Bran sees stuff that happened in Winterfell south of the Wall. Seems to be no problem whatsoever

Q1: but isn't a greenseer a special type of skinchanger... that is aside from animals a greenseer can also skinchange a tree and thus see what a tree has seen.

Flame visions: done by Mel in the flames of her hearth in a room in Castle Black. On one occasion she sees Bran and Bllodraven in the flames, looking back at her, laughing at her. Seems to be no problem whatsoever either.

Q1: so flame seeing magic isn't stopped by the wall's magic, but it prevent fire made flesh from flying over. How come?

Conclusion: there's little to no logic to it, except the fact that George decides what magic the wall can prevent and which not, depending on what he needs for the story. If Bran and Bloodraven need to be able to communicate with Theon in some way, they can skinchange ravens, even though Jon can't sense Ghost with a wall between them.

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Good point.

Do you think that it was because there were too many worms that Area's temperature went out of control? The worms collectively seem to be generating so much heat that I don't know what difference the few degrees seperating a dragonlord from normal men would make whereas the difference between a dragonlord and a dragon is far more significant.

Both the descriptions we have of Area mention things pushing against her skin, and they don't burst out until exposed to the cold this probing behaviour seems to promise that at some point they intended to.

Or they grew bigger and multiplied (it got crowdier) the hotter Aerea became: big worm crowd having to share teenie weenie space... if the space is flexible skin, you push against the skin to make more room, no?

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4 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Or they grew bigger and multiplied (it got crowdier) the hotter Aerea became: big worm crowd having to share teenie weenie space... if the space is flexible skin, you push against the skin to make more room, no?

Either way it's pretty gross.

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6 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Let's sum it up: the magics that don't work and the magics that do work

Warging/Skinchanging: not happening with the Wall between warg and wolf, supposedly.

Q1: if Varamyr had been able to get south of the Wall, would he have lost any sense of Orell's bird if it flew across the Wall.

Q2: if the wall prevents skinchanging, then how come Bloodraven and Bran skinchange for example Jeor's raven, or the two ravens in Theon's first chapter of tWoW (excerpt chapter)?

Dragons: not willing or able to cross the Wall: (either they fly against a magical barrier that extends beyond the wall, or the magic feels icy cold to a dragon.)

Q1: if one, then how come wildlings can cross a wall, or how come people can walk on the wall

Q2: is that solely for dragons or other magical creatures, or would Orell's bird also been prevented to cross

Q3: is a wall actually necessary then?

Necromancing: Others cannot wightify a dead person south of the wall. But if you bring a wight south, it remains a wight (until it rots).

Q1: How come a chewed off wight hand can rot to bones given enough time, while north of the wall it requires Summer to crack the marrow. Is that distance or heat differences?

Q: if the magic can keep a dragon from flying over, then will Others be able to cross if the Wall falls?

Coldhands: can't cross, not even through the Gate for which he knows the words.

Q1: Could living humans carry him through the wall's gate and tunnel at Castle Black as they did with Othor and Jafer?

Q2: is it just the magical weirwood gate that wouldn't let him pass?

Greenseeing: done by Bran and Bloodraven from a cave leagues north of the wall, and yet Bran sees stuff that happened in Winterfell south of the Wall. Seems to be no problem whatsoever

Q1: but isn't a greenseer a special type of skinchanger... that is aside from animals a greenseer can also skinchange a tree and thus see what a tree has seen.

Flame visions: done by Mel in the flames of her hearth in a room in Castle Black. On one occasion she sees Bran and Bllodraven in the flames, looking back at her, laughing at her. Seems to be no problem whatsoever either.

Q1: so flame seeing magic isn't stopped by the wall's magic, but it prevent fire made flesh from flying over. How come?

Conclusion: there's little to no logic to it, except the fact that George decides what magic the wall can prevent and which not, depending on what he needs for the story. If Bran and Bloodraven need to be able to communicate with Theon in some way, they can skinchange ravens, even though Jon can't sense Ghost with a wall between them.

 

 

 

The Black Gate is a living Weirwood. Weirwoods are like aspens: their roots connect and become a single plant.

 

Proposal: The wall is not, itself, the source of its magic. The old, now dying gate is, and its true death will bring down the Wall (cold preserves). Further speculation: You take your oath in front of weirwoods so the Gate can know you. In other words, Coldhands needed a weirwood pledged brother. 

 

So, any magic connected through the weirwood network is simultaneously on both sides of the wall. Or a networked seer acts through weirwoods to perform magic in the south. 

Drop that, and living, active magic cannot cross. Inert magic can. 

 

Maybe BR and Bran are viewing Mel, not vice versa.

 

My personal face Coldhands theory is that he's one of the Sentinels, buried in ice in the Wall.

 

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