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What is your theory on The Others?


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If the Others are powerful skinchangers (I think they are), and there are no limits on range (doesn't seem to be) - then the Others could conquer Westeros by a bloodless coup: target the key players, smash their minds out of orbit, and - just move in and start ruling.

I'm not sure why the Others would want to do this, but it does seem within their capabilities. (Some key players seem barely in their right minds even now.)

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On 11/28/2018 at 2:41 PM, hiemal said:

My wackiest theory is that they are a morphologically fluid alien species from a much colder world

From Tuf Voyaging:

"Skrymir sent a stocky man with a square red face and hair the color of mountain ice. His eyes were a crystalline blue that matched the color of his scaled metal shirt."

He kinda sounds like an Other.  Skrymir is an ice planet from the 1000 worlds.  And the language of the Others is called Skroth.  Do people from Skrymir speak Skroth?  The real Skrymir was an Ice Giant from Norse mythology, also called Utgard-Loki, and he was a trickster and master of illusion--he tricks Thor into thinking he is much more powerful than he really is. 

There is another Ice Planet called Ymir, and that is where the blue winter roses are from.  Ymir is the original Ice Giant from Norse mythology.

"The little blue ones are the bitterblooms. They flower even in the bitterest cold, so that’s why they call them that. Originally they came from a world named Ymir, very far off, where they have winters nearly as long and cold as we do. The other flowers are from Ymir too, the ones that grow on the vines around the ship. Those are called frostflowers."

"Even as a child, Holt had loved the stars. He used to walk at night, during the years of high cold when the iceforests bloomed on Ymir. Straight out he would go, for kilometers, crunching the snow beneath until the lights of town were lost behind him and he stood alone in the glistening blue-white wonderland of frost-flowers and icewebs and bitterblooms. Then he would look up.
WinterYear nights on Ymir are clear and still and very black. There is no moon. The stars and the silence are everything."

 

 

From that same paragraph as the guy from Skrymir:

"The envoy from the Azure Triune moved within a haze of holographic projections, a dim, fractured, shifting shape that spoke in an echoey whisper."

That sounds a little like Mel's shadow baby.  Was the shadow baby a holographic projection?  We know she is a charlatan, and her counterpart Morgan from Bitterblooms was a regular person who found some advanced tech and used it to fool people into believing she was magical. 

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On 11/30/2018 at 3:24 PM, Widowmaker 811 said:

And the white walkers hate iron!  So if those swords laid across the tombs serve to lock the evil Stark spirits in, then perhaps it is really true that the Starks and the White Walkers share the same genetics.  In other words, there is definite "ice" in the Starks.  The iron, probably a special alloy, function like kryptonite.  Its proximity is enough to weaken superman.  Maybe the iron does the same to these Stark kings of old.  Those ancient kings were probably closer to a white walker than they were to humans

Bran and Jon both remember Old Nan saying that the Others hated iron.

 

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.

Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins.

Theoretically, could an iron sword kill an Other if it did not shatter during the sword fight? 

"and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it"

Waymar's sword took quite a beating before it shattered in the prologue.

Obsidian is black because it contains iron, is the iron in obsidian the active ingredient?  The CoTF had no metalworking, so obsidian daggers would have been the only way to get iron into an Other's bloodstream.  Did the last Long Night occur during the Bronze Age in Westeros, so were there iron weapons at all?  Is the belief that obsidian and dragonsteel are the only things that can kill the Others a myth?

 

"By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts."

As you say the Stark ghosts also don't seem to like iron.

-------

Sidebar:

Obsidian/dragonglass is called "frozen fire," and in H.P. Lovecraft's The Challenge from Beyond, there were "ancient legends that called quartz crystals ice which had frozen too hard to melt again."  If the obsidian can kill Others, then the crystal swords of the Others can kill fire monsters like the dragons, or Melisandre. 

Quartz crystal is used as a prism to make "rainbows".  The Other's sword is a shard of crystal.  The High Septon wears a crystal crown, and the Rainbow/Crystal swords are used by the Warrior's Sons,who are essentially his King's Guard, and Renly's King's Guard were the Rainbow Guard.  The regular King's Guard is dressed in all white, with white armor.  If the Others are a King's Guard, who is their King?  

Also, Dragonbone is black because it contains iron.  And can somebody explain why is dragonbone is flexible? 

------

Also, Old Nan says the Others hate hot blood, or want to drink it.  But the Starks have cold blood.

 

"Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold"

"Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. . . . He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks."

 

"The thought of drowned knights under the water gave Bran the shivers. He didn't object, though; he liked the shivers."

"Brandon was different from his brother, wasn't he? He had blood in his veins instead of cold water."

Starks," Littlefinger said. "Here in the south, they say you are all made of ice,"

"Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes."

Is this to indicate that the Starks don't have to worry about the Others because they have cold blood.  And are likely to join and/or lead the Others.

"And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood."

"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

That last quote really seems to suggest the Others might be liberators, that they free slaves from bondage and punish the slavers.
 

But then there is this quote that indicates that the Starks are the "good" Others that were supposed to protect the realm from the "bad" Others.

"When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come," King Garth IX said famously. "If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening."

 

The Starks aren't afraid of the dark either,

Bran:

"Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them."

"Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts"

"He'd felt safe in the darkness; when you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the stone lords had given him courage."

 

Arya:

"She used to hide in the crypts of Winterfell when she was little, and play games of come-into-my-castle and monsters and maidens amongst the stone kings on their thrones."

"It was very dark right now, she realized. . . the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again.

The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone."
 

And she has lived as a blind person and can find her way around in the dark

"Under the temple was a maze of vaults and tunnels where even men with two good eyes were often lost, but the blind girl had learned every inch of it, and she had her stick to help her find her way should her memory falter."

"Not for me. Her nights were bathed in moonlight and filled with the songs of her pack, with the taste of red meat torn off the bone, with the warm familiar smells of her grey cousins. Only during the days was she alone and blind."

Arya will be well-prepared when the Long Night comes again.

 

Jon:

"I don't even dream of Ghost anymore. All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones."

"the crypts where the old Stark kings sit in darkness."

Finally, Theon reflecting on Bran's fall says

"The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could. It was a strange thought"

To me that sounds like Bran's fall was an assassination attempt--that the gods wanted to kill Bran, but were not able to.   

 

But my theory on the Others is that they were a superweapon that the CoTF created, and then lost control of.  They were Great Empire citizens who got captured by the CoTF and got mind-control shards of magical stone (Bloodstone or petrified weirwood sap) inserted into them and were sent to attack the empires of men.  The Long Night was a global phenomenon, the Lion of Night attacked with his demon army in Essos, and the White Walkers came in Westeros.  They successfully collapsed human civilization.

How the CoTF lost control of the Others was that Bran skinchanged a human who was about to get converted into an Other and they inadvertently gave him godlike powers, and he became the Great Other.  However, due to time-travel causality paradoxes, he could not change any events that would have prevented him from ending up in Bloodraven's cave.

"If the little crannogman could visit the Isle of Faces, maybe I could too. All the tales agreed that the green men had strange magic powers. Maybe they could help him walk again, even turn him into a knight. They turned the little crannogman into a knight, even if it was only for a day, he thought. A day would be enough." 

They do turn Bran into a knight like he always wanted, but the irony is that he is trapped 8,000 years in the past, so he has had to wait around for 8,000 years for Bran to be born before he could enact his plan to destroy the weirwoods. 

 

The idea that the Others are simply misunderstood would fit with George's style, in In the House of the Worm, the evil "other" group were simply misunderstood--the Grouns were portrayed as evil monsters who capture the good guys (the Yaga-la-hai) and eat them and they have been at war with them forever.   Later we find that they are not monsters, they are just a group of humans who lived deeper in the tunnels and have adapted to their surroundings, and are actually fairly peaceful, but have been terrorized by genetically engineered eater worms that the Yaga-la-hai created to destroy them.   And the protagonist Annelyn tries to convince his people to end the war against the Grouns and breed with them instead. 

The mud pots in Guardians were similarly misunderstood and it caused an arms race that went out of control.  Disaster was averted by negotiation and understanding rather than force of arms.

And Greel from Dark, Dark were the Tunnels.  There was a nuclear holocaust and human civ on Earth was destroyed, but the lunar colonies survived intact.  However, the lunar humans needed fresh DNA because their gene pool was too small, so they came back to Earth to get it, but the Earth humans had rapidly mutated from radiation and had become hideous cave dwellers that they did not even recognize as human, they killed Greel's giant rat and then killed Greel when he attacked them, but it was a big misunderstanding--they did not know the rat was Greel's warg mind-brother and that humans in the caves had become telepathic and could see in the dark, and had become "ugly" but were still fully human.

 

 "The Others are not dead. They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous."

The Others are beautiful fairy people made of ice, not ice demons.

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9 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Bran and Jon both remember Old Nan saying that the Others hated iron.

 

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.

 

Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins.

 

Theoretically, could an iron sword kill an Other if it did not shatter during the sword fight? 

"and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it"

Waymar's sword took quite a beating before it shattered in the prologue.

 

Obsidian is black because it contains iron, is the iron in obsidian the active ingredient?  The CoTF had no metalworking, so obsidian daggers would have been the only way to get iron into an Other's bloodstream.  Did the last Long Night occur during the Bronze Age in Westeros, so were there iron weapons at all?  Is the belief that obsidian and dragonsteel are the only things that can kill the Others a myth?

 

"By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts."

 

As you say the Stark ghosts also don't seem to like iron.

-------

Sidebar:

Obsidian/dragonglass is called "frozen fire," and in H.P. Lovecraft's The Challenge from Beyond, there were "ancient legends that called quartz crystals ice which had frozen too hard to melt again."  If the obsidian can kill Others, then the crystal swords of the Others can kill fire monsters like the dragons, or Melisandre. 

Quartz crystal is used as a prism to make "rainbows".  The Other's sword is a shard of crystal.  The High Septon wears a crystal crown, and the Rainbow/Crystal swords are used by the Warrior's Sons,who are essentially his King's Guard, and Renly's King's Guard were the Rainbow Guard.  The regular King's Guard is dressed in all white, with white armor.  If the Others are a King's Guard, who is their King?  

Also, Dragonbone is black because it contains iron.  And can somebody explain why is dragonbone is flexible? 

------

Also, Old Nan says the Others hate hot blood, or want to drink it.  But the Starks have cold blood.

 

"Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold"

 

"Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. . . . He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks."

 

 

"The thought of drowned knights under the water gave Bran the shivers. He didn't object, though; he liked the shivers."

"Brandon was different from his brother, wasn't he? He had blood in his veins instead of cold water."

Starks," Littlefinger said. "Here in the south, they say you are all made of ice,"

"Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes."

 

Is this to indicate that the Starks don't have to worry about the Others because they have cold blood.  And are likely to join and/or lead the Others.

"And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood."

 

"Then a long cruel winter fell," said Ser Bartimus. "The White Knife froze hard, and even the firth was icing up. The winds came howling from the north and drove them slavers inside to huddle round their fires, and whilst they warmed themselves the new king come down on them. Brandon Stark this was, Edrick Snowbeard's great-grandson, him that men called Ice Eyes. He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south. Your Seven don't know winter, and winter don't know them."

 

That last quote really seems to suggest the Others might be liberators, that they free slaves from bondage and punish the slavers.
 

But then there is this quote that indicates that the Starks are the "good" Others that were supposed to protect the realm from the "bad" Others.

"When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come," King Garth IX said famously. "If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening."

 

 

The Starks aren't afraid of the dark either,

Bran:

"Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them."

"Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts"

"He'd felt safe in the darkness; when you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the stone lords had given him courage."

 

Arya:

"She used to hide in the crypts of Winterfell when she was little, and play games of come-into-my-castle and monsters and maidens amongst the stone kings on their thrones."

"It was very dark right now, she realized. . . the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again.

The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone."
 

And she has lived as a blind person and can find her way around in the dark

"Under the temple was a maze of vaults and tunnels where even men with two good eyes were often lost, but the blind girl had learned every inch of it, and she had her stick to help her find her way should her memory falter."

"Not for me. Her nights were bathed in moonlight and filled with the songs of her pack, with the taste of red meat torn off the bone, with the warm familiar smells of her grey cousins. Only during the days was she alone and blind."

Arya will be well-prepared when the Long Night comes again.

 

Jon:

"I don't even dream of Ghost anymore. All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones."

"the crypts where the old Stark kings sit in darkness."

 

Finally, Theon reflecting on Bran's fall says

"The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could. It was a strange thought"

To me that sounds like Bran's fall was an assassination attempt--that the gods wanted to kill Bran, but were not able to.   

 

But my theory on the Others is that they were a superweapon that the CoTF created, and then lost control of.  They were Great Empire citizens who got captured by the CoTF and got mind-control shards of magical stone (Bloodstone or petrified weirwood sap) inserted into them and were sent to attack the empires of men.  The Long Night was a global phenomenon, the Lion of Night attacked with his demon army in Essos, and the White Walkers came in Westeros.  They successfully collapsed human civilization.

How the CoTF lost control of the Others was that Bran skinchanged a human who was about to get converted into an Other and they inadvertently gave him godlike powers, and he became the Great Other.  However, due to time-travel causality paradoxes, he could not change any events that would have prevented him from ending up in Bloodraven's cave.

"If the little crannogman could visit the Isle of Faces, maybe I could too. All the tales agreed that the green men had strange magic powers. Maybe they could help him walk again, even turn him into a knight. They turned the little crannogman into a knight, even if it was only for a day, he thought. A day would be enough." 

They do turn Bran into a knight like he always wanted, but the irony is that he is trapped 8,000 years in the past, so he has had to wait around for 8,000 years for Bran to be born before he could enact his plan to destroy the weirwoods. 

 

The idea that the Others are simply misunderstood would fit with George's style, in In the House of the Worm, the evil "other" group were simply misunderstood--the Grouns were portrayed as evil monsters who capture the good guys (the Yaga-la-hai) and eat them and they have been at war with them forever.   Later we find that they are not monsters, they are just a group of humans who lived deeper in the tunnels and have adapted to their surroundings, and are actually fairly peaceful, but have been terrorized by genetically engineered eater worms that the Yaga-la-hai created to destroy them.   And the protagonist Annelyn tries to convince his people to end the war against the Grouns and breed with them instead. 

The mud pots in Guardians were similarly misunderstood and it caused an arms race that went out of control.  Disaster was averted by negotiation and understanding rather than force of arms.

And Greel from Dark, Dark were the Tunnels.  There was a nuclear holocaust and human civ on Earth was destroyed, but the lunar colonies survived intact.  However, the lunar humans needed fresh DNA because their gene pool was too small, so they came back to Earth to get it, but the Earth humans had rapidly mutated from radiation and had become hideous cave dwellers that they did not even recognize as human, they killed Greel's giant rat and then killed Greel when he attacked them, but it was a big misunderstanding--they did not know the rat was Greel's warg mind-brother and that humans in the caves had become telepathic and could see in the dark, and had become "ugly" but were still fully human.

 

 

 "The Others are not dead. They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous."

The Others are beautiful fairy people made of ice, not ice demons.

I appreciate the thoughtful reply.  You brought a lot of questions and theories there.  GM has yet to reveal the origins of the Others and until then we will all bring out theories.  

Obsidian was made from the fires of the earth.  Perhaps it retains some of that heat even after it has cooled.  It is brittle and would make for a poor defensive weapon.  Imagine parrying a metal blade with obsidian.  It would break, like glass.  It's like the flint arrowheads of primitive peoples.  

There is one glass blade that seems to avoid shattering.  In other words, it's shock resistant.  Dawn.  Looking like pale milk glass, it is not made out of iron.  

The parallel to Annalyn in this story might be either Bran or Daenerys.  The "truth" to be found in Asshai might be about the Others.  Who knows.  That they are not the true enemy.  GM's stories has man in the wrong, usually out of ignorance.  Perhaps the people of Westeros are doing something unintentional that threaten the Others.  Like the mudpots were boiled and eaten by the humans.  

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9 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Bran and Jon both remember Old Nan saying that the Others hated iron.

 

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.

 

Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins.

 

Odd that they would hate iron so much. It doesn't seem to have much affect on them or their weapons and armor.

Quote

The Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. 

snip

Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other's parry was almost lazy.

When the blades touched, the steel shattered.

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles.

Now, Waymar's sword is steel, not iron. But steel is simply an iron/carbon alloy, and there is usually more iron in equal-sized quantity of steel than in raw iron.

So is it possible that the Others did not have their current weapons and armor back in the Long Night? If they are newly developed, mayhaps this why the decided to invade now, because they now have an extreme advantage over the common weapons of men?

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34 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Odd that they would hate iron so much. It doesn't seem to have much affect on them or their weapons and armor.

 

We have no idea what iron (or anything other than dragonglass for that matter) will do the Others or their armor. Neither Ser Waymar nor Small Paul managed to get a shot in. The Others' swords are ostensibly made of ice (with some kind of charm on it, hence the blue glow) since the one that Sam broke with his dragonglass dagger apparently melted along with its master. Frozen water wouldn't be perturbed by iron.

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The Others are descendants of the Original Three Ice-Creatures. They were named Ice-T, Ice Cube, and Vanilla Ice. Vanilla Ice would often be referred to as the "White Walker" since he was the only white guy among the three brothers, and because he preferred to walk instead of ride a horse due to ice hemorroids that plagued him most of his life. 

They traveled Westeros and achieved success performing as a musical act at weddings, fairs, and various other engagements. People from all over the known world would visit Westeros to enjoy the music of the Others (which they referred to in Skroth as "rap"), and, due to this popularity, the First Men gained a worldwide reputation for having the most lit parties. 

Eventually, as often occurs in these situations, egos and creative differences clashed within the group and the Others broke up. Ice-T and Ice Cube immediately found success in Essos as actors. Vanilla Ice, attempting to achieve the same success, starred in a play called "Cool as Ice", but it was universally panned by all of the critics in Braavos.

Depressed, the White Walker retreated home to the Lands of Always Winter, renamed himself The Night's King, and began a humanitarian effort to rescue orphaned infant boys, some of whom were left out in the cold at night to die. He founded the charity known as Ice Ice, Baby, and rescued and raised many baby boys who would have otherwise perished. These boys grew up in the Ice Mansion with Vanilla Ice and continued in their adopted father's footsteps once they became adults. 

Ice Ice, Baby is still a thriving charity that enjoys tax-exempt status from any kingdom that arises in Westeros. They are mostly funded these days by donations from Wildlings and volunteer efforts from dead people. Recently, they have been preparing for another major push south in anticipation of a long and cold winter and, thus, many more discarded infant boys that are in need of rescuing. Hopefully, their message of "Stop, collaborate, and listen" will be heeded by those with warm hearts down south, and many baby boys' lives will be saved this winter. 

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1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Odd that they would hate iron so much. It doesn't seem to have much affect on them or their weapons and armor.

I think the Other that fought Waymar was just a very good swordsman.  Waymar drew his sword first, they had a fair fight, and Waymar lost.   But if Waymar had been a better swordsman and could have made contact in less than 10 moves--before his sword broke-- I am thinking he could have killed the Other with a regular iron/steel sword. 

Confirmed the Long Night happened during the Bronze Age,

""The children of the forest are all dead," said Mormont. "The First Men killed half of them with bronze blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron. Why a glass dagger should—"

" The Andals brought iron weapons with them and suits of iron plates"

" Andals began their conquest of Westeros. Their iron weapons and armor surpassed the bronze with which the First Men still fought, and many First Men perished in this war. "

So the Long Night happened when there were no iron or steel swords in Westeros, except Dawn maybe.

It might be that the Other's armor could not be cut by bronze swords, but obsidian and steel could cut it--that it was more like kevlar than steel plate--that would fit with my theory that it is the adaptive color-changing Chameleon Cloth from George's other stories.

Compare the Other's armor:

"Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took."

with chameleon cloth:

"Vikary was dressed in a mottled suit of chameleon cloth, all shades of black and blacker when he entered the circle of his enemies."

"dressed in thick pants and jacket of chameleon cloth that seemed to change color as they neared."

"His chameleon cloth jacket had turned the same brown as the synthawood panelling of the bulkhead behind him."

"He was dressed in chameleon cloth that was somber red-gray now, flushed and feverish like the glowstone blocks of the pavement."

 

The Other's swords are light blue like Dawn and like the swords of the Great Empire of the Dawn

" In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. "

" the Other's danced with pale blue light. "

" The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. "

" He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light. "

" Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, "

and Jaime's dream sword:

"Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand's breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of the steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. "

 

In the Stone City, duralloy is blue or blue-gray.  And in Sever Times Never Kill Man, duralloy knives and duralloy machetes are mentioned.

The Great Empire was a highly advanced world-spanning civilization that was deliberately collapsed from the Long Night.  Dawn and the Other's swords are their technological relics.  That is why I suggested that the Others were Great Empire citizens who were turned against their people, because the have Great Empire swords and the fairy elf looks of the Great Empire and Valyrian peoples.

 

It is canon that Dawn is an extraterrestrial object, I think it is an advance metal alloy sword (duralloy)  that was recovered from a crashed spaceship.  What crashed at Starfall was a ship not a meteor.  In The Men of Greywater Station, a falling star is actually a crashing spacecraft.  And some of the place names in Dorne are suggestive of pulling things out of the sky: Skyreach, the Fowlers (bird-catchers), or things falling out of the sky: Starfall, Martell means "war-hammer" and there are several sci-fi books were asteroids are called hammers--Lucifer's Hammer, and the Hammer of God.  The word "nimeri" means to "hit the target" and Nymeria is compared to an astronomical object "Do you see the white one, Quentyn? That is Nymeria's star, burning bright, and that milky band behind her, those are ten thousand ships."  Ships that fall out of the sky.  The castle of House of Martell's is the Sandship, a stone castle shaped like a ship. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

That is why I suggested that the Others were Great Empire citizens who were turned against their people, because they have Great Empire swords and the fairy elf looks of the Great Empire and Valyrian peoples.

 Bingo.      The "turned against their people" bit may need to be reversed though, once we finally hear their story.  Like with Dondarrion's group of king's men, the Others' people may have turned against them.  What if the Others remained loyal and the world went disloyal all around them, and exile in the north became their icy hell, meant to be their death until they did what was needed to survive there by adjoining themselves to the Cold.    They'd need to drop some kind of bombshell during talks , wouldn't they?  About how the ignorant moderns have been living a lie that directly impacts them now with the lethal destabilization of their world, and the Others are required to help remedy the sitch?   Or else all we've got is the old empire trying to reassert itself on the globe, which kind of makes the wall look like a joyful solution to stick with after all.   If the Wall is a mistake to be abandoned now at last so the several species can move on, the Others need to come loaded with info bombs to justify changing a frozen status quo.  about how badly the Maester's regime is abusing  the modern world.  Because if all the Others have got is, "we're the sad sacks of history, grown monstrous from neglect.  Love us!"  then they may not feel the love coming from the chilly continent.

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51 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

What if the Others remained loyal and the world went disloyal all around them, and exile in the north became their icy hell, meant to be their death until they did what was needed to survive there by adjoining themselves to the Cold. 

With all of the symbolism indicating that the Others are a Kingsguard, sworn for life, and sworn to duty even after their purpose is gone, and sworn to a way of life when the rest of the world has moved on, that kinda works.  That has a lot of callbacks to Dying of the Light and the Kavalaar society, stuck in their old ways and refusing to abandon tradition even into the space age--in that way the fire and ice duality is trying to strike a balance between respecting tradition but being willing to accept change and progress.  

But I still think the Others were created as a superweapon to destroy human civilization, but have broken their chains and are now on their own mission.  The Umber sigil is a giant breaking his chains, and Mors Umber--> mors is latin for death, corpse, annihilation, and umber=umbra=shadow, and the Others are white shadows

"the Greatjon's uncles, blustery men in the winter of their days with beards as white as the bearskin cloaks they wore. A crow had once taken Mors for dead and pecked out his eye, so he wore a chunk of dragonglass in its stead. As Old Nan told the tale, he'd grabbed the crow in his fist and bitten its head off, so they named him Crowfood."

All white, thought to be dead, he has the crow-eye-pecking symbolism maybe indicating the Other's have their third eye open, he is attacked by a crow but kills it easily, dragonglass inserted into him but it does not kill him--and his name means death shadow, and his sigil is a giant breaking his chains.

The Other's wield crystal shard swords, and Luwin says "Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did."  No safe way to use magic, the children done goofed, and their creation is going to wipe them out.

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18 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

From Tuf Voyaging:

"Skrymir sent a stocky man with a square red face and hair the color of mountain ice. His eyes were a crystalline blue that matched the color of his scaled metal shirt."

He kinda sounds like an Other.  Skrymir is an ice planet from the 1000 worlds.  And the language of the Others is called Skroth.  Do people from Skrymir speak Skroth?  The real Skrymir was an Ice Giant from Norse mythology, also called Utgard-Loki, and he was a trickster and master of illusion--he tricks Thor into thinking he is much more powerful than he really is. 

There is another Ice Planet called Ymir, and that is where the blue winter roses are from.  Ymir is the original Ice Giant from Norse mythology.

"The little blue ones are the bitterblooms. They flower even in the bitterest cold, so that’s why they call them that. Originally they came from a world named Ymir, very far off, where they have winters nearly as long and cold as we do. The other flowers are from Ymir too, the ones that grow on the vines around the ship. Those are called frostflowers."

"Even as a child, Holt had loved the stars. He used to walk at night, during the years of high cold when the iceforests bloomed on Ymir. Straight out he would go, for kilometers, crunching the snow beneath until the lights of town were lost behind him and he stood alone in the glistening blue-white wonderland of frost-flowers and icewebs and bitterblooms. Then he would look up.
WinterYear nights on Ymir are clear and still and very black. There is no moon. The stars and the silence are everything."

Interesting! Perhaps the idea isn't as incredible as I thought.

18 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

From that same paragraph as the guy from Skrymir:

"The envoy from the Azure Triune moved within a haze of holographic projections, a dim, fractured, shifting shape that spoke in an echoey whisper."

That sounds a little like Mel's shadow baby.  Was the shadow baby a holographic projection?  We know she is a charlatan, and her counterpart Morgan from Bitterblooms was a regular person who found some advanced tech and used it to fool people into believing she was magical. 

One that uses shadow instead of light? That's a cool thought!

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14 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

 "The Others are not dead. They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous."

The Others are beautiful fairy people made of ice, not ice demons.

That's mostly a difference of perspective or context, isn't it? Their antipathy towards VS certainly puts them more in the fairy camp, IMHO, but their apparent enmity towards the warm blooded does seem a bit demonic.

Quote

But my theory on the Others is that they were a superweapon that the CoTF created, and then lost control of.  They were Great Empire citizens who got captured by the CoTF and got mind-control shards of magical stone (Bloodstone or petrified weirwood sap) inserted into them and were sent to attack the empires of men.  The Long Night was a global phenomenon, the Lion of Night attacked with his demon army in Essos, and the White Walkers came in Westeros.  They successfully collapsed human civilization.

I can get behind this idea as well. If I'm right about White Walkers and Ice Dragons being the same basic organism cast into different shapes the CotF could have modeled their forms after the Dawnites themselves and their most formidable weapons. Creating beings with independent wills to do their fighting seems short-sided and foolish but why should humanity have a monopoly on those things?

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22 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

We have no idea what iron (or anything other than dragonglass for that matter) will do the Others or their armor. Neither Ser Waymar nor Small Paul managed to get a shot in. The Others' swords are ostensibly made of ice (with some kind of charm on it, hence the blue glow) since the one that Sam broke with his dragonglass dagger apparently melted along with its master. Frozen water wouldn't be perturbed by iron.

 

22 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think the Other that fought Waymar was just a very good swordsman.  Waymar drew his sword first, they had a fair fight, and Waymar lost.   But if Waymar had been a better swordsman and could have made contact in less than 10 moves--before his sword broke-- I am thinking he could have killed the Other with a regular iron/steel sword. 

 

Well, yeah, but it shattered his steel sword and sliced through his steel ringmail like it was butter. No weapon of man can do that. If iron was something the Others feared, you would think it would pose a bit more of a challenge than that.

I'm sure that if you drove an iron or steel sword through an Other's skull it would kill him just as easily as it would kill any man. But the fact that the Others have weapons, and one would assume armor as well, that can render steel utterly useless in both an offensive and defensive capacity would indicate that they have nothing to fear from either steel or iron. So if the tales about the Other's fearing iron back then are true, it stands to reason that the weapons and armor they have now did not exist during or before the Long Night.

Also, as you noted Odin, Dawn shares some remarkable characteristics with the Others' blades. Any chance that it is an Other blade -- mayhaps an ancestral blade that was taken from them ages ago, and now they want it back? Just because the story of Dawn coming from a fallen star is canon doesn't mean it is true. 

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1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Well, yeah, but it shattered his steel sword and sliced through his steel ringmail like it was butter. No weapon of man can do that. If iron was something the Others feared, you would think it would pose a bit more of a challenge than that.

I'm sure that if you drove an iron or steel sword through an Other's skull it would kill him just as easily as it would kill any man. But the fact that the Others have weapons, and one would assume armor as well, that can render steel utterly useless in both an offensive and defensive capacity would indicate that they have nothing to fear from either steel or iron. So if the tales about the Other's fearing iron back then are true, it stands to reason that the weapons and armor they have now did not exist during or before the Long Night.

 

Sure they can. All you need is an armor piercing tip (I own a period replica blade with one). All mail (chain or ring) is more vulnerable to a thrusting/piercing attack, which is how I took what was described in each encounter. Now if they had been wearing plate armor, then I think you'd have a case.

The Other blade shattered the sword after many blows, which I would put more down to the charm than the material used. In the first encounter, GRRM is a little cagey in his description, but in the second he clearly states a crystalline structure for the Other blade. There is no specifics about what kind of crystal, but since none of the NW, including Sam, mention the remnants of the weapon or collect them as proof of their encounter (you know, something that would be helpful), we can only conclude that the weapon melted along with the Other.

That leaves why did it melt/vaporize/disintegrate? The easy answer is that it was just enchanted ice and only had form and function as long as its enchanter did. The other answer is that it is indeed an enchanted crystal of some sort and the contact with dragonglass destroys that enchantment and shatters the weapon.

This is all assuming that the "crack" that Sam heard was the Other's weapon failing, but in any case, there is no mention of the weapon after Sam kills the WW.

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4 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

Sure they can. All you need is an armor piercing tip (I own a period replica blade with one). All mail (chain or ring) is more vulnerable to a thrusting/piercing attack, which is how I took what was described in each encounter. Now if they had been wearing plate armor, then I think you'd have a case.

The Other blade shattered the sword after many blows, which I would put more down to the charm than the material used. In the first encounter, GRRM is a little cagey in his description, but in the second he clearly states a crystalline structure for the Other blade. There is no specifics about what kind of crystal, but since none of the NW, including Sam, mention the remnants of the weapon or collect them as proof of their encounter (you know, something that would be helpful), we can only conclude that the weapon melted along with the Other.

That leaves why did it melt/vaporize/disintegrate? The easy answer is that it was just enchanted ice and only had form and function as long as its enchanter did. The other answer is that it is indeed an enchanted crystal of some sort and the contact with dragonglass destroys that enchantment and shatters the weapon.

This is all assuming that the "crack" that Sam heard was the Other's weapon failing, but in any case, there is no mention of the weapon after Sam kills the WW.

Sorry, I don't recall anyone in Westeros talking about "armor piercing" tips on their swords. The text also doesn't say whether Royce's mail fell to a slash or a thrust or pierce, but it does say that his sword was "white with frost" after the blades touched "again and again." So clearly, this is not armor piercing or any other kind of weapon that belongs to men. It is either a highly advanced technology or it's magic.

Either way, the point remains: the Others clearly have weapons and armor that can overpower steel, and presumably iron, in short order. As the encounter with Royce says, the Other was almost lazy at the end -- he's not even the slightest bit concerned about this steel weapon, presumably because he knows it's about to break. So if the Others possessed these super weapons during the Long Night, there would be no reason for them to fear iron weapons, any more than the Andals should fear the First Men's bronze. Obsidian, sure, but iron would have been no match for them.

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8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Sorry, I don't recall anyone in Westeros talking about "armor piercing" tips on their swords. The text also doesn't say whether Royce's mail fell to a slash or a thrust or pierce,...

Plate armor development was a direct result of better steel production creating weapons more capable of piercing mail, but I'm not going to argue the point.

 

It fell to both. All that means is that the Others' swords are really sharp, whether by engineering or charm is unknown:

 

Quote

AGOT: Prologue

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

...

The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm.

...

The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk.

 

Bit, as in a tooth, which pierces. The next description is rather odd as silk is relatively hard to cut and was used for component armor (in our history), but the image is that the blades turned his leather and steel armor (ringmail) to bloody rags without much effort. Most decent swords would be able to do that with the target on the ground and defenseless. Ringmail is only so good at stopping damage and something as hard and sharp as a razor (like a samurai sword, for example) would cut the non-steel material parts easily and even break the (comparably soft) rings, especially if the cold (magic or otherwise) was making them more brittle.

 

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

It is either a highly advanced technology or it's magic.

 

My vote is for magic given its reaction to dragonglass, but since it doesn't reference that directly about either case in the text, I suppose those are about as probable as, say, armor piercing tips on weapons.

 

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Either way, the point remains: the Others clearly have weapons and armor that can overpower steel, and presumably iron, in short order.

 

We don't know jack about their armor except that it shimmers in different colors. We don't even know if it stops dragonglass since Sam hit the WW in the throat (although it's a good bet that it doesn't). And it wasn't short order, it was rather a prolonged fight:

 

Quote

AGOT: Prologue

The pale sword came shivering through the air.

Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.

...

Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Other’s danced with pale blue light.

 

 

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

...the Other was almost lazy at the end -- he's not even the slightest bit concerned about this steel weapon, presumably because he knows it's about to break.

 

Quote

AGOT: Prologue

Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry was almost lazy.

When the blades touched, the steel shattered.

 

Of course the Other's parry was "almost lazy". His opponent was injured and spent and he wasn't tired at all. And yes he did know that his opponent's sword would break eventually.

My take is that the Others' swords are made of enchanted ice so cold that it is hard as steel (there is water ice like this right now on bodies in our own solar system, it just needs to be cold enough). If the Others' blades slowly transmit a liquid nitrogen type of cold onto opposing weapons it would fit with what was witnessed and then, after awhile, they would shatter from the stress, but the application is clearly not instantaneous or even quick.

 

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

So if the Others possessed these super weapons during the Long Night, there would be no reason for them to fear iron weapons, any more than the Andals should fear the First Men's bronze. Obsidian, sure, but iron would have been no match for them.

 

True, which makes Old Nan's stories about as suspect as the Pink Letter. However, the Others have had thousands of years to come up with a defense. Perhaps they have and this is why they are moving at this time. It might be nice to know what the Other said right before killing Ser Waymar. For all we know it was, "Hey guys, it worked!"

There seems to be a 3000 year blind spot in the history since the maesters can't agree if the LN was 5000 or 8000 years ago. Might the introduction of iron into the history give a more precise point of conflict if Nan's stories are to be believed and it turns out that the iron swords in the Winterfell crypts really are wards of sorts?

 

ETA:

This weapon seems pretty "armor piercing" to me, in description and in practice:

 

Quote

ASoS: Tyrion X

 

"He is almost eight feet tall and must weigh thirty stone, all of it muscle. He fights with a two-handed greatsword, but needs only one hand to wield it. He has been known to cut men in half with a single blow. His armor is so heavy that no lesser man could bear the weight, let alone move in it."


Prince Oberyn was unimpressed. "I have killed large men before. The trick is to get them off their feet. Once they go down, they're dead." The Dornishman sounded so blithely confident that Tyrion felt almost reassured, until he turned and said, "Daemon, my spear!" Ser Daemon tossed it to him, and the Red Viper snatched it from the air.


"You mean to face the Mountain with a spear?" That made Tyrion uneasy all over again. In battle, ranks of massed spears made for a formidable front, but single combat against a skilled swordsman was a very different matter.


"We are fond of spears in Dorne. Besides, it is the only way to counter his reach. Have a look, Lord Imp, but see you do not touch." The spear was turned ash eight feet long, the shaft smooth, thick, and heavy. The last two feet of that was steel: a slender leaf-shaped spearhead narrowing to a wicked spike. The edges looked sharp enough to shave with. When Oberyn spun the haft between the palms of his hand, they glistened black. Oil? Or poison? Tyrion decided that he would sooner not know. "I hope you are good with that," he said doubtfully.


"You will have no cause for complaint. Though Ser Gregor may. However thick his plate, there will be gaps at the joints. Inside the elbow and knee, beneath the arms . . . I will find a place to tickle him, I promise you."

...


The Red Viper crouched, squinting, and sent his spear darting forward again. Ser Gregor hacked at it, but the thrust had only been a feint. Off balance, he stumbled forward a step. Prince Oberyn tilted his dinted metal shield. A shaft of sunlight blazed blindingly off polished gold and copper, into the narrow slit of his foe's helm. Clegane lifted his own shield against the glare. Prince Oberyn's spear flashed like lightning and found the gap in the heavy plate, the joint under the arm. The point punched through mail and boiled leather. Gregor gave a choked grunt as the Dornishman twisted his spear and yanked it free.

...


Ser Gregor started to turn, but too slow and too late. The spearhead went through the back of the knee this time, through the layers of chain and leather between the plates on thigh and calf.

...


Oberyn whirled cat-quick, and ran at his fallen foe. "EEEEELLLLLLIIIIIAAAAA!" he screamed, as he drove the spear down with the whole weight of his body behind it. The crack of the ashwood shaft snapping was almost as sweet a sound as Cersei's wail of fury, and for an instant Prince Oberyn had wings. The snake has vaulted over the Mountain. Four feet of broken spear jutted from Clegane's belly as Prince Oberyn rolled, rose, and dusted himself off.

...


Ser Gregor tried to rise, The broken spear had gone through him, and was pinning him to the ground.

 

It did take all Oberyn's weight to do it, but the point made it through. It was the wood shaft that failed.

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2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Well, yeah, but it shattered his steel sword and sliced through his steel ringmail like it was butter. No weapon of man can do that. If iron was something the Others feared, you would think it would pose a bit more of a challenge than that.

Valyrian steel can cut through armor and plain steel swords, also.  And the Maesters believe Dawn is a variant of Valyrian steel (or the other way around).  LmL's hypothesis is that Valyrian steel is a variation of the same material as the Other's swords, and Dawn, and the Great Empire's swords. 

"opening Cleon the Great from shoulder to hip with one blow of his curved Valyrian arakh. Frog did not see it, but those who did claimed Cleon's copper armor rent like silk"

"They came together as the battle raged around them, the king in bronze armor, the hero in silvered steel. Though the Falcon Knight's armor flashed brilliantly in the morning sun, his sword was no Lady Forlorn. The duel was done almost before it began, as the Valyrian steel sheared through the winged helm and laid the Andal low. "

Granted that was copper and bronze armor not ringmail or plate, but then Valyrian swords can cut through regular swords.

"The Lannister was armed with a Valyrian sword that no common steel can match, so the Little Lion was hard pressed, his shield in ruins. In the end, bleeding from a dozen grievous wounds with his own blade broken in his hand, he threw himself headlong at his foe. King Lancel cut him near in half, the singers say, but as he died the Little Lion found the gap in the king's armor beneath his arm, and plunged his dagger home."

 

However, Dawn did not cut through the Smiling Knight's sword, but I think it could have.  If Dawn is the same material as the Other's swords, that would mean that it is more advanced metallurgy than magic.  

"The Smiling Knight was a madman, cruelty and chivalry all jumbled up together, but he did not know the meaning of fear. And Dayne, with Dawn in hand . . . The outlaw's longsword had so many notches by the end that Ser Arthur had stopped to let him fetch a new one. "It's that white sword of yours I want,"

"their ancestral sword, called Dawn, and the men who wielded it. Its origins are lost to legend, but it seems likely that the Daynes have carried it for thousands of years. Those who have had the honor of examining it say it looks like no Valyrian steel they know, being pale as milkglass but in all other respects it seems to share the properties of Valyrian blades, being incredibly strong and sharp."

"With dawn he tapped him on the shoulder; the pale blade was so sharp that even that light touch cut through Jaime's tunic,"

 

To the north of Westeros, blue eyed white haired creatures with special white swords.  To the south of Westeros, the Daynes have purple eyes and silver hair with a special white sword. 

 

Sidenote, Jon is a "sword in the darkness" and "the light that brings the dawn" and his sword Longclaw looks like the Sword of the Morning constellation (real world Cygnus/Northern Cross) with a bright star in is hilt, as Longclaw has a white pommel, but it is a black sword.  What does it all mean?

 

 

 

 

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We have seen another sword cutting through steel in a similar way to the WW's sword.

Quote

She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, and then she saw Renly’s sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword

Cold,” said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat.

Quote

The gorget was cut through. One clean stroke, through a steel gorget. Renly’s armor was the best, the finest steel. How could she do that? I tried myself, and it was not possible. She’s freakish strong for a woman, but even the Mountain would have needed a heavy axe. And why armor him and then cut his throat?” He gave Jaime a confused look. “If not her, though…how could it be a shadow?”

The sword of a white shadow and the sword of a black shadow can't be that different.

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8 hours ago, Tucu said:

We have seen another sword cutting through steel in a similar way to the WW's sword.

...

The sword of a white shadow and the sword of a black shadow can't be that different.

 

They don't even seem close to me. The shadow was a pure magical construct and the WW (and their weapons) have physicality associated with them. Also, if the WW blade was that good it would have sheared off Ser Waymar's sword with one stroke and then sliced him in two in no time at all. The shadow sword went through a good steel gorget like it was nothing, the WW blades still had to hack at ringmail.

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