Raising the dead

[Greenmonsterff]

Can WW raise anyone who has ever died? Or do they have to get em while the bodies are still warm?

[SansaJonRule]

Anyone who has not been burned. A lot of the wights are no more than skeletons. Remember when Bran  & Co are approaching the 3ER cave? Wights come out of the ground and grab Jojen.

[Kajjo]

21 hours ago, Greenmonsterff said:

Can WW raise anyone who has ever died? Or do they have to get em while the bodies are still warm?

We don't know for sure. They have never raised old graveyards or the like. So probably there has to be more than just bones. 

There is the old theory of raising the ancient Starks. I don't like it, but it's not impossible.

21 hours ago, Greenmonsterff said:

Or do they have to get em while the bodies are still warm?

Well, so far we have only seen that. We don't know.

[Greenmonsterff]

6 hours ago, SansaJonRule said:

Anyone who has not been burned. A lot of the wights are no more than skeletons. Remember when Bran  & Co are approaching the 3ER cave? Wights come out of the ground and grab Jojen.

I hope that scene was an anomaly. It would be lame if every person that ever died could be raised. Hasn’t Westeros been around for 1000s of years? That’s almost an endless supply of soldiers.

[Kajjo]

10 minutes ago, Greenmonsterff said:

Hasn’t Westeros been around for 1000s of years? That’s almost an endless supply of soldiers.

Yeah, that's too silly. I agree. 

[A Time for Starks]

I do wonder if they will raise the many dead from the Battle of the Bastards.  That would be a sizeable addition to the Army of the Dead.  On the one hand, it's been a while (probably 1 to 2 years) since the battle took place.  However, it's mostly been freezing conditions, therefore delaying the decay of the dead bodies. 

[Kajjo]

2 minutes ago, A Time for Starks said:

I do wonder if they will raise the many dead from the Battle of the Bastards.

Our protagonists knew about wights at the time of the battle of the bastards. So might have burned them. Hopefully they did.

[Charlie Hustle]

They better had them all burned. I can see Jon now being like.. "uhh, i hope yall aint just bury all them bodies out there, because thats gonna be a big problem"

[Hound's She-wolf]

I wonder if the NK can raise people that are pledged or follow other faiths? It seems like the vast majority of his army is made of wildlings and northerners, all who follow the old gods. Whereas the Iron Born, if they have given themselves to the Drowned God, and their phrase 'What's dead may never die'are they wight proofed?  If they belong to their god and their bodies can't be reanimated by the NK. Or if it matters at all.

[Kajjo]

53 minutes ago, Hound's She-wolf said:

I wonder if the NK can raise people that are pledged or follow other faiths? It seems like the vast majority of his army is made of wildlings and northerners, all who follow the old gods.

Raising the dead has nothing to do with former religious confessions or affiliation. They raise heathen horse and ice bears, too.

Dead is dead.

As in the real world there are no different gods but only different religions. There is only one god and his name is death. ;-)

[Hound's She-wolf]

15 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

Raising the dead has nothing to do with former religious confessions or affiliation. They raise heathen horse and ice bears, too.

Dead is dead.

As in the real world there are no different gods but only different religions. There is only one god and his name is death. ;-)

I don't animals can be considered heathen , or religious in any event so I don't think that proves anything. I don't remember anything in the show about all religions being based on the God of Death, what scene/scenes are you basing your statement on?

[Kajjo]

12 minutes ago, Hound's She-wolf said:

I don't remember anything in the show about all religions being based on the God of Death, what scene/scenes are you basing your statement on?

Syrio Forel in S1 teaches to Arya "There is only one God and his name is Death". That was what I referred. This appears to be the established belief of most Bravoosi. 

In the House of Black and White they explain to Arya that the many-faced God is one God, just having many faces like Ironborn, The Seven, the Old Gods, the God of Light and so on. They have several statues in the House of Black-and-White depicting all the different religions and claiming it is just one God after all. And Jaqen H'gar says "and his name is Death", in sync with Syrio Forels belief: Re religion of the many-faced God

This make a lot of sense to me. In the real world there are many religions as well but obviously at maximum one of them is right. Maybe none of them. If there is something absolute, there is one thing absolute. It is extremely unlikely bordering on impossible that several absolute entities can and do exist in parallel.

In the World of Westeros we do not know the origin of magic and miracles. The Children of the Forest were able to work magic and related that to natural forces of trees, water and earth. The God of Light seems to center around fire. The Seven seem to be the more modern, "belief in beyond" equivalent of modern Christianity.

Whatever, the religious affiliation does not matter. It is just a belief of a person and can change. It does not imprint on a person. It has nothing to do with raising the dead to wights.

 

 

[SansaJonRule]

It would make sense to me if the First Men used to burn their dead after their first experience with the White Walkers and Northerners only relatively recently stopped that custom because they believed the WW no longer exist. The Free Folk continued to burn their dead. That would greatly reduce the number of dead available to be raised at Wights, although there's still more than one can count.

A lot of emphasis has been put on the WF crypts and their supposed safety, which has everyone thinking the dead there will be raised as wights. But what if there is something special, perhaps "magical" about the crypts that protects the dead there from being raised? I doubt it, but it would make for an interesting twist and reveal another aspect of the old magic. I do feel like there's got to be something more than just the crypt being full of dead people who can be reanimated to kill all the refugees hiding there. That's so...predictable.

And just how big is Winterfell anyway?

[dbunting]

They can raise any dead. We see some of the dead are nothing more than a bag of bones and yet they are alive.  If they could only raise freshly killed people then where did he get his initial army? You mean thousands of people all died at one time so he could then raise them? 

I think in show terms they can raise any dead being, but they have to be in some proximity to them. You notice that the dead haven't risen all over the world, only in an area around the NK when he does his magic arm raising shit!

[Hound's She-wolf]

4 hours ago, SansaJonRule said:

 lot of emphasis has been put on the WF crypts and their supposed safety, which has everyone thinking the dead there will be raised as wights. But what if there is something special, perhaps "magical" about the crypts that protects the dead there from being raised? I doubt it, but it would make for an interesting twist and reveal another aspect of the old magic. I do feel like there's got to be something more than just the crypt being full of dead people who can be reanimated to kill all the refugees hiding there. That's so...predictable.

And just how big is Winterfell anyway?

The lords and kings have statues that have iron swords sitting on their laps to keep the vengeful spirits away. Except for the one sword that Bran and Rickon used to open the gate to escape the Ironborn. There are so many theories about what is down in the crypts, Jon even had nightmares about it.

[Anthony Pirtle]

13 hours ago, Greenmonsterff said:

Hasn’t Westeros been around for 1000s of years? That’s almost an endless supply of soldiers.

Yeah, but most of them are either dust or dirt by now. It's only the last several hundred years they realistically have to worry about.

...not that this is a big consolation...