The Night King's Possible other destination?

[Deminelle]

And Bran's visions are not proof enough. They needed Sam to find actual documents on Rhaegar and Lyanna marriage.

[Adam_Up_Bxtch]

5 hours ago, LokisRaider said:

The show has also already established that his two main enemies are Bran and Jon, Cersei is nothing to him except just another human that he will eventually get. The show last episode gives us the Night Kings motivation is to get to Bran. Both Bran and Jon are surrounded by a much larger magical army of undead with no escape. Why march past the one place you want to be when you've been shown to be unstoppable and everyone already fears you?

 

On the preview you see undead Viserion for a split second, but he is there in the North.

How could Bran possibly know The Night King's true motivation? What did he go back and hear some speech the NK made to his minions long ago when the guy doesn't talk at all? When they fed us that dialogue I about cringed at how cliche it felt. It sounds to me like Bran thinks the NK is literally Ice Sauron "He wants to bring a night that never ends" "Sauron wants to destroy the worlds of men." This is why I think IF the Night King is there the plan is gonna fail horribly because I guarantee you they have no clue what his actual goal or motivation is.

[King Tam Stark]

Why would the nk send his army to winterfell then go elsewhere basically leaving them to be annihilated?

it wouldn’t be a two pronged attack because all he’d have left would be him n the dragon plus his new army

surely it would make sense to attack elsewhere and leave his army safely away from wf awaiting his return with a second army?

[LokisRaider]

13 hours ago, Adam_Up_Bxtch said:

How could Bran possibly know The Night King's true motivation? What did he go back and hear some speech the NK made to his minions long ago when the guy doesn't talk at all? When they fed us that dialogue I about cringed at how cliche it felt. It sounds to me like Bran thinks the NK is literally Ice Sauron "He wants to bring a night that never ends" "Sauron wants to destroy the worlds of men." This is why I think IF the Night King is there the plan is gonna fail horribly because I guarantee you they have no clue what his actual goal or motivation is.

I'm not arguing that D&D can't write a compelling story with good dialogue, I agree they can't which has been on display for a few seasons. I also wasn't talking about their plan and now it can fail. I do think it will fail and then they (the heroes) will have to abandon Winterfell and then move South with the Night King behind them and Cersei in front of them.

 

My comment was saying how it makes no sense for the Night King to go to Kings Landing first. I hope he has a deeper meaning, but even then it wouldn't involve Kings Landing His story is intertwined with the North and the Starks. Why would he just leave his army and Dragon there and go south by himself? He isn't scared of worried about losing so he doesn't need reinforcements. Going by the show and everything they have shown us directs him to Winterfell.

 

Can he make it to Kings Landing? Yes

Is he going before taking on Winterfell? Why would he when this is what the story has been building t o?

 

[Adam_Up_Bxtch]

43 minutes ago, LokisRaider said:

I'm not arguing that D&D can't write a compelling story with good dialogue, I agree they can't which has been on display for a few seasons. I also wasn't talking about their plan and now it can fail. I do think it will fail and then they (the heroes) will have to abandon Winterfell and then move South with the Night King behind them and Cersei in front of them.

 

My comment was saying how it makes no sense for the Night King to go to Kings Landing first. I hope he has a deeper meaning, but even then it wouldn't involve Kings Landing His story is intertwined with the North and the Starks. Why would he just leave his army and Dragon there and go south by himself? He isn't scared of worried about losing so he doesn't need reinforcements. Going by the show and everything they have shown us directs him to Winterfell.

 

Can he make it to Kings Landing? Yes

Is he going before taking on Winterfell? Why would he when this is what the story has been building t o?

 

Reading back my post I think I came off a bit aggressive wasn't meant to I was just asking the question in general. I just didn't like the Bran scene spooning feeding us the NK's "true motivation"

[House Cambodia]

17 minutes ago, Adam_Up_Bxtch said:

I just didn't like the Bran scene spooning feeding us the NK's "true motivation"

Look on the bright side, at least we were spared a 'sexposition'!

[Sheiraseastar23]

I like the idea of the NK, flying down to Oldtown and burn the Citadel and a big part of the  "memory" of humankind with it. Probably not what's going to happen, but I'd love to see the faces of all those maesters that refused to belive in this threat from the North.

[ferrelhadley]

The Night's King has an army of mindless slaves. He and his "brothers" have to control them. Their strength is mass and numbers. 

Robb's army was free thinking men fighting for their children's future. 

The Night's King will be at Winterfell and will seek to subdue the great citadels of the living one by one. 

[neo555]

On 4/26/2019 at 12:23 PM, LokisRaider said:

It doesn't fit with the story or what we know about the Knight King though. For it to work. For this to be believable we would have to be shown the Knight King is human and is scared or worried. Nothing in the show depicts him like this, in fact everything in the show make shim and his army out to be an unstoppable force of nature where there is no hope against it. They already outnumber the heroes in the North with overwhelming numbers. To go south for another what 40,000? means nothing to him. He has only shown one thing get in his way and you become a part of his army. And Winterfell is in his way.

 

The NK not being at Winterfell doesn't necessarily mean he's scared or worried; it just means he's thinking strategically.  If his goal is to erase the knowledge of the living, then the Citadel is a major source of that knowledge that needs to be eradicated.   Bran has been tagged and bagged, as it were, since he's been marked by the NK.  So even if Bran he survives the Battle of Winterfell, the NK will always know where he is,  therefore Bran is not an immediate threat to the NK's ultimate plan (although as someone else has pointed out, this may or may not be negated if Bran chops off the mark, aka his arm.  Since it's unknown if such an amputation will work, he'll probably choose to keep the arm.  Or maybe the three-eyed raven has to have two arms to tap into the Weirwood living memory network?).   Like you said, another 40,000 dead foot soldiers might not be strategic goal since he has hundreds of thousands at his command already.  That's why the Citadel might be a target, as well as Euron's fleet since the elimination of the fleet would remove an escape route for the populace of King's Landing.  The undead army at Winterfell is expendable, since there are always more of the living to replace them.

[dbunting]

The NK shouldn't be anywhere but Winterfell. It didn't dawn on me until today that if he flies to KL then the show has some explaining to do because it's fucked up.

The last long night ended thousands of years ago. Then Bran the builder built the wall and Winterfell. So the only reason the NK is heading to Winterfell is because Bran is there, it never existed when the walkers were "alive" during the long night,

KL is even newer than Winterfell. KL was built AFTER Aegons conquest, it also never existed during the long night.

If the NK flies straight to something he never knew existed it will not make any sense and the show would have to explain how he knew.

[neo555]

4 hours ago, dbunting said:

The NK shouldn't be anywhere but Winterfell. It didn't dawn on me until today that if he flies to KL then the show has some explaining to do because it's fucked up.

The last long night ended thousands of years ago. Then Bran the builder built the wall and Winterfell. So the only reason the NK is heading to Winterfell is because Bran is there, it never existed when the walkers were "alive" during the long night,

KL is even newer than Winterfell. KL was built AFTER Aegons conquest, it also never existed during the long night.

If the NK flies straight to something he never knew existed it will not make any sense and the show would have to explain how he knew.

 

Although it's more probable than not that the NK is at Winterfell, logically he shouldn't be anywhere near Winterfell because, as Jaime aptly put it, he'd be a fool to expose himself if all the coalition of the living has to do is destroy him and the whole army of the dead falls apart.  However, this doesn't mean that anywhere has to be KL or Old Town.  These two locations just make more thematic sense than actual sense.  He could be just flying aimlessly on Viserion the Cold until the battle is over.  However, the show writers could always think of various improbable scenarios where the NK learns of places he wasn't previously aware of, like say the Last Hearth castle of the newly-undead Umbers.  For instance, a variation of the old Borg method, wherein the NK's assimilation of the Umbers' bodies included assimilation of their memories which would come with a detailed map of everything south of the wall.  This hasn't been shown to be the case yet, but otoh it hasn't been shown to not be true, so who knows as yet.  The point being, the writers might  introduce some kind of MacGuffin that would explain it and the fans will either howl at it or accept it and write long posts on some forum about this plot device.  If only there was a convenient place where such varying opinions could be eloquently and politely expressed...

[dbunting]

6 minutes ago, neo555 said:

 

Although it's more probable than not that the NK is at Winterfell, logically he shouldn't be anywhere near Winterfell because, as Jaime aptly put it, he'd be a fool to expose himself if all the coalition of the living has to do is destroy him and the whole army of the dead falls apart.  However, this doesn't mean that anywhere has to be KL or Old Town.  These two locations just make more thematic sense than actual sense.  He could be just flying aimlessly on Viserion the Cold until the battle is over.  However, the show writers could always think of various improbable scenarios where the NK learns of places he wasn't previously aware of, like say the Last Hearth castle of the newly-undead Umbers.  For instance, a variation of the old Borg method, wherein the NK's assimilation of the Umbers' bodies included assimilation of their memories which would come with a detailed map of everything south of the wall.  This hasn't been shown to be the case yet, but otoh it hasn't been shown to not be true, so who knows as yet.  The point being, the writers might  introduce some kind of MacGuffin that would explain it and the fans will either howl at it or accept it and write long posts on some forum about this plot device.  If only there was a convenient place where such varying opinions could be eloquently and politely expressed...

To introduce something like that this late in the game would be wrong. There has been nothing foreshadowing anything like this in the series. If the Jon/Aegon reveal happened without all the foreshadowing it wouldn't have made sense, but, there was plenty of it. To wait until 3 episode from the end of it and say, oh btw, the NK gains the knowledge of every wight he raises, so that's why he is heading south.

I am not going to be shocked or mad if it happens, but I will want some good explanation. 

And you must be new here, differing opinions are rarely discussed politely and with any kind of eloquence! Go to the book thread and say IMO Stannis is over rated and see what happens to you! 

[neo555]

17 hours ago, dbunting said:

To introduce something like that this late in the game would be wrong. There has been nothing foreshadowing anything like this in the series. If the Jon/Aegon reveal happened without all the foreshadowing it wouldn't have made sense, but, there was plenty of it. To wait until 3 episode from the end of it and say, oh btw, the NK gains the knowledge of every wight he raises, so that's why he is heading south.

I am not going to be shocked or mad if it happens, but I will want some good explanation. 

And you must be new here, differing opinions are rarely discussed politely and with any kind of eloquence! Go to the book thread and say IMO Stannis is over rated and see what happens to you! 

 

I wouldn't be surprised at a twist that wasn't foreshadowed because the writers have created a dilemma .  If the NK falls for Bran's rather obvious trap he'll be shown not to be the existential threat that the show has framed him.  Due to the immense numerical superiority of the army of the dead, there's no reason for the NK to join the battle until his army has utterly destroyed Winterfell, regardless of Bran's location(which he always knows).  Yet if the NK is not at Winterfell, how does he know of the other regions south of the Wall if he were to attack one of them.  The assimilation example is just a wild guess with little merit.  A better one would probably make use of the previously known aspects of the supernatural in Westeros - like something tapping into the Weirwoods that are everywhere in the south.  Any explanation should preferably be good, but how good/wrong this plot point is will be relative for each individual.

I was being facetious about the tone of the postings on this forum.  I have no illusions about the level of discourse here or anywhere else, this is the Internet after all.  I was just paraphrasing and satirizing Tyrion's conversation with Bran on the subject of Bran's journey in becoming the three-eyed raven.

[Tywin Tytosson]

On 4/24/2019 at 11:51 PM, Hound's She-wolf said:

I don't see how she could negotiate with someone who doesn't speak. I don't think the NK needs a deal either. But I do like the idea of Cersei the Night Queen.

The NK does speak.  But not in any human language.

[Tywin Tytosson]

On 4/27/2019 at 5:44 PM, neo555 said:

 

The NK not being at Winterfell doesn't necessarily mean he's scared or worried; it just means he's thinking strategically.  If his goal is to erase the knowledge of the living, then the Citadel is a major source of that knowledge that needs to be eradicated.   Bran has been tagged and bagged, as it were, since he's been marked by the NK.  So even if Bran he survives the Battle of Winterfell, the NK will always know where he is,  therefore Bran is not an immediate threat to the NK's ultimate plan (although as someone else has pointed out, this may or may not be negated if Bran chops off the mark, aka his arm.  Since it's unknown if such an amputation will work, he'll probably choose to keep the arm.  Or maybe the three-eyed raven has to have two arms to tap into the Weirwood living memory network?).   Like you said, another 40,000 dead foot soldiers might not be strategic goal since he has hundreds of thousands at his command already.  That's why the Citadel might be a target, as well as Euron's fleet since the elimination of the fleet would remove an escape route for the populace of King's Landing.  The undead army at Winterfell is expendable, since there are always more of the living to replace them.

Or provide a way to get to Essos.  If the fleet is captured.   Or if Euron makes an arrangement with the NK.

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Or provide a way to get to Essos.  If the fleet is captured.   Or if Euron makes an arrangement with the NK.

Again, how do you make a deal with a being that just wants humanity dead?

 

There is no safe place as long as he has a dragon. He can fly solo to any continent or island and raise their dead into a new army, move on and keep repeating the cycle.

[Tywin Tytosson]

22 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Again, how do you make a deal with a being that just wants humanity dead?

 

There is no safe place as long as he has a dragon. He can fly solo to any continent or island and raise their dead into a new army, move on and keep repeating the cycle.

Very salient points. 

I admit that I was thinking of the books.  

The NK would likely just ignore the Iron Fleet.  The Fleet would rot away sooner or later.  And the sailors die.

Minor quibble - Craster seemed to have some kind of 'deal' with the NK.  But nothing of the complexity or magnitude of yielding the Iron Fleet.

[dbunting]

18 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Minor quibble - Craster seemed to have some kind of 'deal' with the NK.  But nothing of the complexity or magnitude of yielding the Iron Fleet.

Ahh yes, very true. He did have some pact where he gave him sons so apparently you can make a deal with the devil! Dammit, every time I think I have something figured out I find out I don't!

[Hound's She-wolf]

Welp, any other scenario would have been better than what actually happened.

[neo555]

16 hours ago, Hound's She-wolf said:

Welp, any other scenario would have been better than what actually happened.

 

Yeah, there were several lapses of common sense from both sides of the battle, like the Dothraki re-enacting the Charge of Light Brigade futility and the NK blithely sauntering into Bran's obvious trap before his undead horde had the chance to easily finish off the few defenders left.  It's like the NK was late for his dragon blue-eye flight to KL on Viserion Dead Air so he had to hurry with the hands-on and overly dramatic icing of Bran.