Heresy 218 a brief walk on the dark side

[alienarea]

41 minutes ago, Janneyc1 said:

We are all in agreement that Benjen knows about Jon's parentage though right?

I would have preferred most of Jon's story (wildlings, Ygritte, Mance, ...) having been Benjen's, with Benjen getting killed at the end of ADwD. Jon would have been a bigger sidenote until then, rising through the ranks.

[JNR]

1 hour ago, Janneyc1 said:

We are all in agreement that Benjen knows about Jon's parentage though right?

Best I could say is "Maybe."

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, Janneyc1 said:

We are all in agreement that Benjen knows about Jon's parentage though right?

Of course he knows:

Quote

"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son."

[Brad Stark]

I doubt Benjen knows.  GRRM said he left Howland off camera because he knew too much.  Howland might know other things but this is the most likely. 

[Matthew.]

2 hours ago, Janneyc1 said:

We are all in agreement that Benjen knows about Jon's parentage though right?

While it's extraordinarily little to go on, Benjen's reaction in this passage always reads to me as though he might know something:
 

Quote

"I am almost a man grown," Jon protested. "I will turn fifteen on my next name day, and Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children."

"That's true enough," Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon's cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.

The conversation, in general, gives me vibes that Benjen isn't entirely happy with the way Jon has been raised, and his resultant self-image; mundanely, that might just mean that he takes Ned's cover story at face value, and is unhappy that Jon seems to have internalized the stereotypes of bastardy, but I have a suspicion that Benjen knows the truth, and that he doesn't like that Jon was raised in ignorance.
 

21 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

I doubt Benjen knows.  GRRM said he left Howland off camera because he knew too much.  Howland might know other things but this is the most likely. 

Howland also seemed to understand the implications of Jojen's green dream of the winged wolf and the 3EC:

Quote

"You are the winged wolf, Bran," said Jojen. "I wasn't sure when we first came, but now I am. The crow sent us here to break your chains."

"Is the crow at Greywater?"

"No. The crow is in the north."

"At the Wall?" Bran had always wanted to see the Wall. His bastard brother Jon was there now, a man of the Night's Watch.

"Beyond the Wall." Meera Reed hung the net from her belt. "When Jojen told our lord father what he'd dreamed, he sent us to Winterfell."

I'm assuming here that it was also Howland who told the Reeds that Bran needed to be brought to the north side of the Wall, so it may be that Howland is being kept "off screen" because he knows what's going on with the return of the Others, and other significant mysteries.

[St Daga]

On 2/12/2019 at 11:39 AM, Brad Stark said:

Tunguska was seen and heard 300 miles away, and that isn't the upper limit, but I agree it is unlikely the Daynes followed it from Essos. 

A better question is if an object landed far away, wouldn't someone else have found it first? 

It is really hard to say how much of the story that surrounds Dawn is myth or truth. I am thinking that perhaps IF the Dayne that found the meteorite, IF that is really what happened, was much closer to the Torrentine valley than I had previously thought.

 

On 2/12/2019 at 1:12 PM, Tucu said:

For that my bet is on Howland. He was the closest magic user that we know of, so him casting some shadows or rising some wights from the bodies of Ned companions is not out of the question. Ned is not the only Stark metaphorically commanding shadows in the books. After that some "cleaning" would be required.

By this, do you mean Ned's "wraiths"?  It could be that Ned's men were dressed in the grey cloaks of men loyal to House Stark. Just as Jon is commanding black cloaked men who are loyal to the Night's watch?

 

On 2/12/2019 at 5:23 PM, JNR said:

Well, first, I'm going to assume by "3EC" you mean Bloodraven.

Nope, I am not sold on the idea that Bloodraven is the Three-eyed Crow. I think they are probably different beings. I think Euron is either linked to the 3EC or he IS the 3EC. I also kind of like the idea that the 3EC could be Old Nan  but it's a bit of a stretch for me. I would not mind it at all, though!

 

On 2/12/2019 at 5:23 PM, JNR said:

Well, Dawn is certainly a famous blade that comes up repeatedly.  You'd think supernatural properties like glowing on its own, or being nearly invisible when seen edge-on, or being made of crystal, would come up every time Dawn does.

I don't think that Dawn glows all the time, or if it did glow, it would even be something that many people would know about. I think if Dawn does glow or become "alive with light" it is something very special. And why should many people know about something like that at all? We really know very little about Dawn or what is going on with it. I think that the "alive with light" is linked to SAD's sad smile, because SAD knows something about Dawn that the rest of us don't know yet. Perhaps it is how a new SotM is chosen! I understand it's tinfoil and don't really expect anyone else to follow me in this idea! Time will tell if I am crazy or not!

 

On 2/12/2019 at 3:55 PM, corbon said:

On 2/11/2019 at 12:05 PM, St Daga said:

One part of the story about Dawn that is hard for me to associate with a meteorite is the idea that the "first Dayne" followed, tracked, a meteorite. A meteorite flashes for but a moment, and then it is gone, and it's not something a person could follow from a distance (although it would leave an impact crater),

He followed its track, which is different from 'tracking' it.
A shooting star, a meteorite flashing by in a moment. shows a line, a track. If it flashed by low before actually landing (instead of being a brief flash before burning up in the atmosphere) it would show a longer track. And if it passed overhead, that track would give an easily 'followed' direction leading to the landing place.
So yes, it is something a person could follow from a distance.

Okay, if he didn't follow it's trajectory in the sky, then what kind of "track" did the star leave? A meteorite would be seen for moments, but then it would be gone. Even if it is seem from a long distance, it only lasts a small amount of time. Unless it landed and set the country side on fire and it burned for days and days. I guess a forest fire could be seen for a long distance, at least long enough to track something. I just don't think a meteorite would leave a trail in the sky long enough to track, no matter what angle it flew at. A comet makes more sense for any length of time.

However, a smoke trail type  could be possible, and might be trackable for several hours. I found this based on meteorite "fireballs".

 

Quote

 

3. Can you see fireballs in daylight, and will a fireball leave a trail?

Yes, but the meteor must be brighter than about magnitude -6 to be noticed in a portion of the sky away from the sun, and must be even brighter when it occurs closer to the sun.

Fireballs can develop two types of trails behind them: trains and smoke trails. A train is a glowing trail of ionized and excited air molecules left behind after the passage of the meteor. Most trains last only a few seconds, but on rare occasions a train may last up to several minutes. A train of this duration can often be seen to change shape over time as it is blown by upper atmospheric winds. Trains generally occur very high in the meteoric region of the atmosphere, generally greater than 80 km (65 miles) altitude, and are most often associated with fast meteors. Fireball trains are often visible at night, and very rarely by day.

The second type of trail is called a smoke trail, and is more often seen in daylight fireballs than at night. Generally occurring below 80 km of altitude, smoke trails are a non-luminous trail of particulate stripped away during the ablation process. These appear similar to contrails left behind by aircraft, and can have either a light or dark appearance.

 

 

 

On 2/12/2019 at 5:23 PM, JNR said:

It might or might not, depending on mass, but even if it did, we're talking about many thousands of years ago.  What had been a (I'm just making this up) twenty-foot crater, leaving only a remnant meteorite that weighs a hundred pounds or so, would be long forgotten and built over. 

Certainly a small crater would disappear over time, or could be covered. I can see this is possible and there is just nothing visible left of that place the meteorite fell. In my head, I think the story of Dawn is more of a metaphor than an actual happening, but I can see why think it's more literal! 

 

On 2/12/2019 at 5:23 PM, JNR said:

Even a greatsword like a claymore only weighs five or six pounds, and if Dawn is like Valyrian steel in mass, it weighs less than ordinary steel for any given volume.

The weight of Dawn might be lighter, but it still needs to have size or mass to be considered a great sword.

Sorry, if something I have mentioned above is a repeat of later discussion. I just am commenting on a few items and have not caught up with reading the last several days worth of discussion.

[Brad Stark]

19 minutes ago, St Daga said:

Okay, if he didn't follow it's trajectory in the sky, then what kind of "track" did the star leave? A meteorite would be seen for moments, but then it would be gone. Even if it is seem from a long distance, it only lasts a small amount of time. Unless it landed and set the country side on fire and it burned for days and days. I guess a forest fire could be seen for a long distance, at least long enough to track something. I just don't think a meteorite would leave a trail in the sky long enough to track, no matter what angle it flew at. A comet makes more sense for any length of time.

Again using Tunguska, it lasted 10 minutes across the sky.  Certainly not enough to reach the impact site, but enough to know which direction exactly. And again, distance, not speed, is the reason comets are visible so much longer. 

[Brad Stark]

To put this in perspective, Tunguska was estimated to be caused by a 60 to 190 meter object.  Haley's Comet is a relatively small comet, only 15,000 meters long. With small fragments falling, no one with Westerous technology could differtiate between comet debris or asteroid.  But the sort of comet we see for months in the sky would wipe out humanity if it hit Earth. 

[JNR]

59 minutes ago, St Daga said:

I think that the "alive with light" is linked to SAD's sad smile, because SAD knows something about Dawn that the rest of us don't know yet.

Not that different from my own view, that in these books, dreaming characters sometimes become aware of truths that they do not, at all, have any way to realize when they're conscious.

The obvious examples would be the Ghost of High Heart and Jojen... but even a "normal" character like Jaime, while dreaming, "learned" the truth that Brienne was in trouble at Harrenhal and therefore insisted on going back to rescue her when he woke.

I think in Ned's case, he learned a little something special about Dawn that was symbolized by Dawn's glowing-with-light appearance in the dream (and that Dawn did not look that way in life).

59 minutes ago, St Daga said:

The weight of Dawn might be lighter, but it still needs to have size or mass to be considered a great sword.

Of course. I'm just saying you don't need a very big meteorite, or crater that it would generate, to wind up with twenty pounds of workable metal... which would suffice for several failed experiments, such as those we see in the myth of Lightbringer, and one successful sword at the end of it.

A single hundred-pound meteor could be 80% unusable material and still yield that much ore.

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

By this, do you mean Ned's "wraiths"?  It could be that Ned's men were dressed in the grey cloaks of men loyal to House Stark. Just as Jon is commanding black cloaked men who are loyal to the Night's watch?

In his dream Ned commands wraiths with shadow swords. We have seen shadows fighting in the the prologue of AGoT and in the chapter when the shadow kills Renly. Ned thinking of shadows and "as blue as the eyes of death" seem out of place, so I don't discard shadows or wights being involved in the encounter. Even if this was not literal, it looks like a big foreshadowing of a Stark commanding shadows.

With regards to the clothing, Ned's companions were nobles and they seem to tend to wear armour in the colours of their own houses.

 

[Lady Rhodes]

On 2/6/2019 at 9:01 AM, Feather Crystal said:

Here is the best argument that the original religion of the Targaryens were not the old gods. 

Rhaegar could not have abducted Lyanna. After the tourney at Harrenhal, he and Elia went to Dragonstone to birth Aegon. Once she was well enough to travel they sailed south to Dorne to request the 10,000 Dornishmen - and perhaps swap out Aegon for another babe, allowing Doran to raise Aegon in the Water Gardens. When Rhaegar returned from the south he had Elia with him.

Quaithe is introduced as a shadowbinder from Asshai. She also resides in Qarth. She is one of three representatives that came back with Jhogo after Dany had sent out from the waste her blood riders in three different directions. How would Quaithe also be located at the Citadel? Or were you implying she took one? Because I do believe she has one in her possession, and that it's how she appears to Dany.

Long time no talk! Haha

in my interesting tidbit project for feast, the way the text is written in regards to the glass candles of the prologue, either: there are a total of four glass candles (1 green, three black) or the citadel has four of which many more exist. I am inclined to believe the former.

i believe quaithe has one, urrathon nightwalker has one in Qarth (and I think he is actually Euron Greyjoy), and the Citadel has one. So where is the fourth? I think the Others or the 3EC.  Since this glads candles are a Valyrian magic, if I am correct, this could link the Valyrians to the old gods

[Black Crow]

On 2/14/2019 at 11:58 AM, SirArthur said:

It's not only about having the material, it is also about having the heat to melt it.

But ultimately this is a fantasy not an archaeological reconstruction or a dissertation. GRRM has a basis for a plot device which is plausible if a touch thin on detail and probably a bit dodgy. 

[alienarea]

Maybe it is all less related than we believe? A comet crashed and caused the long night, and changed parameters.

One thought I vaguely outlined heresies ago, IIRC, is that weirwoods died because of the long night, and the spirits of the greenseers were able to roam free and became the Others? A different form of life.

[Brad Stark]

13 hours ago, JNR said:

 Of course. I'm just saying you don't need a very big meteorite, or crater that it would generate, to wind up with twenty pounds of workable metal... which would suffice for several failed experiments, such as those we see in the myth of Lightbringer, and one successful sword at the end of it.

A single hundred-pound meteor could be 80% unusable material and still yield that much ore.

Dawn was forged from the heart of a fallen star. This suggests the meteorite was much larger and not homogeneous. 

The real problem is timing. I don't think GRRM would have a meteorite cause The Long Night.  He has said he isn't mixing scifi into this story and to have the central conflict caused by a natural disaster goes against his theme of people being responsible for all the problems.  If the meteor didn't cause The Long Night, which happened first?  Did the Others take over, and just when the last hero needed it, a meteorite fell?  Or did a meteorite of magic metal land thousands of years ago and get ignored until The Long Night? 

An alternative explanation is maybe Dawn isn't special because of what it was made of but only how it was made.  The Dayne's could have had lots of meteoric steel weapons that rusted away like unmagical swords do.  The last hero could have used any hunk of iron, but chose Daynish meteorite, because if you are going to build a time machine into a car, you may as well do it with style. 

[St Daga]

15 hours ago, JNR said:

The obvious examples would be the Ghost of High Heart and Jojen... but even a "normal" character like Jaime, while dreaming, "learned" the truth that Brienne was in trouble at Harrenhal and therefore insisted on going back to rescue her when he woke.

I have wondered about this aspect of Jaime's dream before, and thought it might have been internal knowledge he already had. He had been at Harrenhal, the bear was known to be in the bear pit and it had been used previously to kill while entertaining the rest of the men. He also knew that Brienne would fight before submitting to Vargo Hoat's bed, and that therefore she might have a different fate in store for her. I think even without the dream, Jaime was possibly aware that Brienne the Beauty could face the bear pit, and that information didn't come to him from the dream itself. Now, the dream might have destabilized him enough that it allowed him to take action and change the prelaid plan. The part of Jaime's dream that seems quite mystical to me is the two swords that burn with blue fire!

 

14 hours ago, Tucu said:

In his dream Ned commands wraiths with shadow swords. We have seen shadows fighting in the the prologue of AGoT and in the chapter when the shadow kills Renly. Ned thinking of shadows and "as blue as the eyes of death" seem out of place, so I don't discard shadows or wights being involved in the encounter. Even if this was not literal, it looks like a big foreshadowing of a Stark commanding shadows.

With regards to the clothing, Ned's companions were nobles and they seem to tend to wear armour in the colours of their own houses.

I think of Ned's grey wraith's and the shadow's of the Other's as similar, while the black shadow that killed Renly feels quite different to me. The blue eyes of death might relate to Ned's wraith's or they might relate to someone else, SAD, perhaps. I like the idea that links death's eyes to the petals of a blue rose, however!

While I don't discount that people from the north wear their own color's most of the time, I wonder if they might not wear Stark colors for special occasions. We see this with the westermen who escort Tywin's body home. They wear their own armor and steel and shields, but they are cloaked in Lannister crimson for Tywin's final journey! Since the details of Ned's fever dream, what happened at the toj, even if it was before the sack or after it, are so vague, I think this detail of what these 7 northmen might have been up to is very different that what we are lead to believe. We have no idea how Rickard, Brandon or Lyanna's bones got home, and perhaps this specially selected 7 northmen was part of that type of escort? Some speculation here, of course... I just think we are being told the past story in snippets of the current story!

 

On 2/14/2019 at 9:55 AM, Janneyc1 said:

We are all in agreement that Benjen knows about Jon's parentage though right?

I am not sold on Benjen knowing Jon's parentage. He might suspect, but I don't know if anyone but Ned truly knows. And perhaps Howland, since we have been teased so much with the idea that Howland is a survivor of the toj, and Jon MUST be linked to the toj, whether he actually is or not. Actually, I doubt more and more that Jon is linked to the toj or Dorne at all!

[dialt]

On 2/13/2019 at 6:17 PM, JNR said:

Sam, we have:

Quote

The dead have no mercy left in them, and the Others . . . no, I mustn't think of that, don't think, don't remember, just walk, just walk, just walk.

Sobbing, he took another step.

And then there's the Ned passage quoted earlier, that applies immediately after Lyanna died.  I don't think we need to invoke greenseers to explain this sort of thing; it's just human nature.

I was re-reading that Sam chapter (ASOS 18) yesterday or so...

And I think there is a lot more than what first meet our eyes. If one pays attention there are a lot of passages that somehow parallel ADWD Bran chapters and the prologue as well, that beside the fact that the 3 of them at some point lose not only the sense of time but are uncapable of distiunguish dream/reality.

Sam, Bran and Varamyr at some point find themselves half buried in the snow. They wish or fear to die while sleeping.
They seek for fire and feel fire on their checks. In doing so, they think about their mothers.

All of them at some point, feel the taste the blood in their mouths, they all fall on their knees (Bran while inside Hodor).

They cannot walk. Bran for obvious reasons. Varamyr because he's injured, Sam becuase he's too tired and in their chapters that is a main narrative point. In addition, Sam ends up being carried by Small Paul, pretty much like Bran is by Hodor (and he is repeteadly called "pig", whereas Varamyr remebers what Eggon told him: that skinchargers - like him and therefore Bran - south of the Wall are killed like "pigs").

Sam and Varamyr, remember how their own fathers casted them away. In additon:

SAM: "He was such a coward. Lord Randyll, his father, had always said so, and he had been right. Sam was his heir, but he had never been worthy, so his father had sent him away to the Wall." 

But Sam consoles himself thinking that at least he's going to die as man of night's watch. That he is a coward, but at least he had done his duty.

Varamyr, instead, remembers how he wished to become King-Beyond-the-Wall but even tho he failed, he consoles himself thinking that at least he became some kind of Lord.

And Bran, who wasn't casted away, has this to think: 

"I was going to be a knight, Bran remembered. I used to run and climb and fight. It seemed a thousand years ago.
What was he now? Only Bran the broken boy, Brandon of House Stark, prince of a lost kingdom, lord of a burned castle, heir to ruins"
Because of that, he consoles himself thinking that at least he may become a greenseerer.

Then look at this from ADWD Bran III

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."

Sam is a reader. In addition in that chapter his role is essentialy that of taking care of ravens, ink, parchment. Varamyr on the other hand has already shown us what happens when a skincharger dies.

And then this one

"It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven... but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin."

That is Sam's job vs what Bran is learing. There's another detail in ASOS Sam I that may tie to this: it's when t. Small Paul asks Sam... to sing. And Sam refuses. It's an odd passage. But reading the 2 chapters togheter, one as the parallel of the other, then suddenly it becomes interesting.

Overall... I'd say that it is all about the theme of memory, of passing knowlege and how.

Magic vs rational thinking.

It may be also foreshadowing if not of the end game of how the story will end.

In the sense that, in the era that will come after the battle for the Dawan, magic will die and the memory of what happened, the Song of Ice and Fire, will turn out to be a Song written in ink by Samwell Tarly.

 

[JNR]

4 hours ago, alienarea said:

A comet crashed and caused the long night, and changed parameters.

To create a worldwide meteorological effect like the Long Night (GRRM has said in interviews that other continents were affected), it would have to be a spectacularly huge impact.  

I also think we'll find in time that all the weather-related issues have a magical basis.

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

If the meteor didn't cause The Long Night, which happened first?  Did the Others take over, and just when the last hero needed it, a meteorite fell?  Or did a meteorite of magic metal land thousands of years ago and get ignored until The Long Night?

These aren't the only two options. 

Quote

As she led the princess to the fire, Arianne found Ser Gerold behind her. "My House goes back ten thousand years, unto the dawn of days," he complained.

So it seems quite possible to me that a meteorite fell, the sword was forged, hundreds or thousands of years went by... and then the Long Night happened. 

In which case, there's no coincidence to explain.  There's just a sword that doesn't degrade over time, which is what we already knew Dawn to be, as a factual matter.

[JNR]

1 hour ago, St Daga said:

I think even without the dream, Jaime was possibly aware that Brienne the Beauty could face the bear pit, and that information didn't come to him from the dream itself.

It was only after the dream that Jaime insisted on going back, though. 

Is that really a coincidence, because the dream was irrelevant?  Or does it reflect the certainty he acquired from the dream?

Ned's fever dream contains other curious nuggets, too.  The dream-phrase "blue as the eyes of death" is quite remarkable coming from him, since he never in his life learns the Popsicles or wights are real, and openly says earlier in the book that

Quote

"You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one."

Yet the truth about the Popsicles' reality seems to have made it into his dreaming mind, all the same.

[Brad Stark]

13 minutes ago, JNR said:

To create a worldwide meteorological effect like the Long Night (GRRM has said in interviews that other continents were affected), it would have to be a spectacularly huge impact.  

I also think we'll find in time that all the weather-related issues have a magical basis.

These aren't the only two options. 

So it seems quite possible to me that a meteorite fell, the sword was forged, hundreds or thousands of years went by... and then the Long Night happened. 

In which case, there's no coincidence to explain.  There's just a sword that doesn't degrade over time, which is what we already knew Dawn to be, as a factual matter.

Except that doesn't fit with the story of aa forging his sword because it was needed. 

[JNR]

7 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

Except that doesn't fit with the story of aa forging his sword because it was needed. 

Well, I don't think all aspects of that tale are going to turn out to be true. 

For instance, the first quench in the tale is water.  But no smith who knows the first thing about what he's doing would ever quench an important sword in water.   Water quenches lead directly to cracks and structural instabilities generally.

For that matter, I don't think the smith's name was "Azor Ahai," or that he labored -- multiple weeks! -- in "the temple" to forge each of these swords.  I think it's pretty clear the sword was forged in Westeros and swords don't need multiple weeks to forge.