Heresy 224 Whitey Snow and the Winter Hill Gang

[asongofheresy]

I think it was in this thread or previous one, @Black Crow ? said Winterfell also means hill, interestingly there is a Northern house called Whitehill and they are one of the only houses in North that worships the Seven. Manderly s are another and their sigil is a merman with a trident, Triton maybe?, I think Merling King is connected to LoN somehow but Whitehill makes me wonder if Old Gods are connected to new ones in some way. 

 

[Brad Stark]

3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I actually don't think Gared knew anything about the mother direwolf, because she and the pups weren't found until after he was beheaded and the Stark party was on it's way back to Winterfell. Its a wonder that they didn't notice or hear anything on their way to see Gared as I'm assuming they took the same route over the bridge there and back. The event is meant to be magical and symbolic, so we might have to accept that everything was put into place via magic. And if it was magic that put everything into place, then we need to consider who worked the magic? Is this something that a greenseer could accomplish? Was it done by the room full of Children greenseers or in conjunction with the godhead itself?

I don't think anyone ever wonders where the Lady of the Lake came from in Arthur's story. Bloodraven has a bit of Merlin imagery with his confinement in the cave of skulls under the weirwood. If the Lady of the Lake can give Arthur his sword Excalibur and raise Lancelot in an enchanted land disguised as a lake, then a dead mother direwolf and pups can be presented to the Starks, magically appearing out of nowhere. Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone (the proof of Arthur's lineage) are sometimes said to be the same weapon, but in most versions they are considered separate. 

Having Jon find Ghost is sort of like presenting Arthur with his true lineage. Gared was found in an old holdfast in the hills away from Winterfell. While it's not explicitly mentioned, perhaps the location is within the wolfswood? The wolfswood may be an enchanted place and akin to the lake where the Lady of the Lake resides.

We've talked about Gared a lot.   Opinion seems to be something scared the crap out of him, and someone sent him on a mission.   Of course the big question is whether someone rescued him from the Others and sent him on a mission,  or the Others themselves sent him. 

We've discussed the mission, likely as bringing the direwolves South.   But we haven't discussed what scared him.   This doesn't seem like an ordinary reaction to seeing the Others.   Sure they are unexpected and somewhat scary, but I wouldn't completely lose my mind for days just because I saw a mythological humanoid on my way to work. 

[JNR]

10 hours ago, LynnS said:

I still question whether the pregnant direwolf came from north of the Wall with Gared.

Wise to question, IMO, since a plausible method is very difficult to find.

Since it seems unimaginable Gared brought a pregnant direwolf through a Wall tunnel with him, the only method left appears to be the Black Gate.  Which has been proposed in the past in Heresy.

However, I find it just about as unimaginable that Gared knows about the Black Gate, while nobody else in the Watch does including LC Mormont, Mance clearly never did either, etc.   I'm not at all sure GRRM knew about the Black Gate while writing AGOT.

I suppose a pregnant direwolf could hang-glide over, if launching from a mountain on the west side. 

But it would be difficult to steer a glider with paws.  She could easily smash into the Wall or drift off course into the frozen bay, etc.

 

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

We've talked about Gared a lot.   Opinion seems to be something scared the crap out of him, and someone sent him on a mission.   Of course the big question is whether someone rescued him from the Others and sent him on a mission,  or the Others themselves sent him. 

We've discussed the mission, likely as bringing the direwolves South.   But we haven't discussed what scared him.   This doesn't seem like an ordinary reaction to seeing the Others.   Sure they are unexpected and somewhat scary, but I wouldn't completely lose my mind for days just because I saw a mythological humanoid on my way to work. 

You don’t think he had reason to be scared? He was further away from the action than Royce and Will, but perhaps he went looking for them when it became apparent neither were coming back.? Maybe he saw the white walkers after they killed Royce, and then saw Royce and Will stumble out of the woods as wights? If I’d seen all that I’d be scared shitless too, but would I be scared enough to climb over the Wall? Do we know which castle he was from? Castle Black is where the new recruits start out at, but they could have been stationed at the Shadow Tower, then if Gared found his way back he could have descended the Gorge or crossed at the Bridge of Skulls to escape notice.

[Brad Stark]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

You don’t think he had reason to be scared? He was further away from the action than Royce and Will, but perhaps he went looking for them when it became apparent neither were coming back.? Maybe he saw the white walkers after they killed Royce, and then saw Royce and Will stumble out of the woods as wights? If I’d seen all that I’d be scared shitless too, but would I be scared enough to climb over the Wall? Do we know which castle he was from? Castle Black is where the new recruits start out at, but they could have been stationed at the Shadow Tower, then if Gared found his way back he could have descended the Gorge or crossed at the Bridge of Skulls to escape notice.

Royce himself was relatively calm.  I am not saying Gared had no reason to be even a little afraid, but the man completely lost his mind from terror.   The only thing in the series that reminds me of this is the Thing that came in the Night. 

[Brad Stark]

2 hours ago, JNR said:

Wise to question, IMO, since a plausible method is very difficult to find.

Since it seems unimaginable Gared brought a pregnant direwolf through a Wall tunnel with him, the only method left appears to be the Black Gate.  Which has been proposed in the past in Heresy.

However, I find it just about as unimaginable that Gared knows about the Black Gate, while nobody else in the Watch does including LC Mormont, Mance clearly never did either, etc.   I'm not at all sure GRRM knew about the Black Gate while writing AGOT.

I suppose a pregnant direwolf could hang-glide over, if launching from a mountain on the west side. 

But it would be difficult to steer a glider with paws.  She could easily smash into the Wall or drift off course into the frozen bay, etc.

 

We know Gared ended up on the South side of the Wall - that isn't up for debate.   The Black Gate, one of the castles, or around to the West are all implausible for a man in Gared's shape and the wolf would handle travel over rough terrain better.   It is possible GRRM himself doesn't know, but that isn't an argument against the wolf going with Gared. 

[Lord Aegon The Compromiser]

4 hours ago, JNR said:

Wise to question, IMO, since a plausible method is very difficult to find.

Since it seems unimaginable Gared brought a pregnant direwolf through a Wall tunnel with him, the only method left appears to be the Black Gate.  Which has been proposed in the past in Heresy.

However, I find it just about as unimaginable that Gared knows about the Black Gate, while nobody else in the Watch does including LC Mormont, Mance clearly never did either, etc.   I'm not at all sure GRRM knew about the Black Gate while writing AGOT.

I suppose a pregnant direwolf could hang-glide over, if launching from a mountain on the west side. 

But it would be difficult to steer a glider with paws.  She could easily smash into the Wall or drift off course into the frozen bay, etc.

 

RE: Whether GRRM knew about the Black Gate in AGOT. That's a great point. George has told us all along he is a gardener. This leaves him room to either imagine the specifics later or change them ie the new TWOW twist he's all excited about. He isn't strictly adhering to a detailed blueprint, as he never made one. Without a doubt many later details weren't known to GRRM while writing AGOT, which started as Book 1 of 3.

[Black Crow]

The fact remains as I summarised above that Gared was a member of a patrol that was bumped by a pack of six white walkers somewhere north of the Wall. Somehow he survived to turn up close enough to Winterfell for the Lord Stark to casually ride out, chop his head off and return for tea and buns at his own fireside.

As a direct result the said Lord Stark stumbles across a a direwolf and six new-born pups, corresponding exactly in number and sex to the six children of Winterfell, and corresponding also to the number of white walkers in the pack which scragged Gared's patrol.

There is a connection even if we don't have it spelled out.

An odd little side issue of course concerns Jon. All six children were sent direwolf pups. He and everyone else assumes that he gets the odd pup because he's the bastard. However, whether or not his mummy and his daddy were married, what really singles Jon out is that he isn't one of Lord Eddard's own children. He's still a son of Winterfell but the difference between him and the other children is greater than mere bastardy. He's not a son of Lord Eddard Stark yet the Old Gods still send him a direwolf.

 

[Melifeather]

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Somehow he survived to turn up close enough to Winterfell for the Lord Stark to casually ride out, chop his head off and return for tea and buns at his own fireside.

As Lord of Winterfell it would be up to him to judge and execute any deserters. Gared was held at a small holdfast outside Winterfell, but I'm not so sure that is where he was found. If he was a true deserter he would have avoided Winterfell, so it seems likely that he was brought to that holdfast and held there to await Ned's judgement. He could have been captured further north by people loyal to the Starks.

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As a direct result the said Lord Stark stumbles across a a direwolf and six new-born pups, corresponding exactly in number and sex to the six children of Winterfell, and corresponding also to the number of white walkers in the pack which scragged Gared's patrol.

 

I'm not so sure there were only six white walkers. The text can be read more than one way:

Quote

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.

It could have been six, or even eight, and it might be as many as seventeen if he was counting how many were in each group as they emerged. I'm thinking "twins to the first" sets the precedence (or intention), so the "twins" were a group of two, then "three of them" are a second group of three. "Four" is a third group containing four, and "Five" is a fourth group with five. If GRRM intended "three of them" to be a tally of the first white walker plus the addition of the "twins", then he should have used language like, "and now there are three". Then we'd know for sure he was keeping a running tally, but he didn't do that. He kept the language vague and open to interpretation.

I think it's confusing to associate the white walkers with the direwolves, because that implies that they're on the same side when I think it's clear that they are on opposing sides. The white walkers are part of the threat, while the direwolves are part of the defense.

[LynnS]

15 hours ago, JNR said:

However, I find it just about as unimaginable that Gared knows about the Black Gate, while nobody else in the Watch does including LC Mormont, Mance clearly never did either, etc.   I'm not at all sure GRRM knew about the Black Gate while writing AGOT.

There must be several ways past the Wall that the wildlings use without climbing over it.  Herds of elk are seen migrating south by the Shadow Tower.  Of course, someone could have taken him to the Black Gate, he doesn't necessarily have to know about it.  What he doesn't do is go back to Castle Black which is where I would expect him to go unless he wasn't allowed to go there.   There is also a suggestion in the Prologue that a wolf was nearby.  That's an interesting coincidence considering the events that follow.

I can't really say what GRRM knew about the Black Gate in GoT.  The Night Fort is probably something he has given some thought; so I don't know if this is something he held back until he pulls it out for Bran or came up with it later.  However, introducing the Black Gate in Dance makes it a possibility after the fact.

 

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I'm not so sure there were only six white walkers. The text can be read more than one way:

Yah that's a good question.  What about the WW that Sam dispatches?  Is that one of the original six?  If the WW are the spirits of Starks, how many could there be?  If they are imprisoned in the Crypts, what keeps them there?  Is it their bones and an iron sword?  What happens if their bones don't make it to the crypts?  If the direwolf bond is key; then there can't be any WW under 200 years old.  Are they collected by the old gods/weirwood and dispatched at some point?  I'm reminded of Jon's dream of a weirwood watching him - a tree with Ned's face.

 

[Melifeather]

46 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Yah that's a good question.  What about the WW that Sam dispatches?  Is that one of the original six?  If the WW are the spirits of Starks, how many could there be?  If they are imprisoned in the Crypts, what keeps them there?  Is it their bones and an iron sword?  What happens if their bones don't make it to the crypts?  If the direwolf bond is key; then there can't be any WW under 200 years old.  Are they collected by the old gods/weirwood and dispatched at some point?  I'm reminded of Jon's dream of a weirwood watching him - a tree with Ned's face.

 

You bring up a good point. White walkers are seen after Jon and the Stark kids get their direwolves. They cannot be the same magical creatures sharing the same spirits. Although to support Black Crow's argument, Ned's execution of Lady does match up with Sam's killing of one of them with obsidian, although the two events are far apart in the books. I do view Sam as a parallel of Ned, so the killings may simply be parallels.

I don't think there's enough evidence to support the idea that the white walkers are created solely from the spirits of Stark wargs. While I do think they are magical creatures of flesh made ice, I suspect it's important that the process begins with human sacrifice. Just as the Targaryens believed they could transform into a dragon upon death, I think humans can transform into white walkers upon death. 

The Targaryens aren't the only family that hatched dragons. Many Valyrian families were dragonlords, so it's not the last name that makes them special, but rather their nationality or race. I view the origins of the white walkers the same way. The Starks may not be the only family that can become a white walker. Maybe any family of First Men nationality (race) can become a white walker? The wildlings and the Starks share the blood of the First Men, but somewhere back in history they splintered off from each other and apparently it was over adopting a feudal system.

If the blood of the First Men remains pure and untainted with Andal blood, perhaps there is an increase in the likelihood that they can be skinchangers?

Jeor Mormont says it's well known that the wildlings burn their dead. Is that a more recent tradition? Because we also hear about the many old graves that Mance had dug up, and there are lots of wights. I suspect that burial was the tradition, but once they realized magic had returned they began to burn their dead.

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

There must be several ways past the Wall that the wildlings use without climbing over it.  Herds of elk are seen migrating south by the Shadow Tower.  Of course, someone could have taken him to the Black Gate, he doesn't necessarily have to know about it.  What he doesn't do is go back to Castle Black which is where I would expect him to go unless he wasn't allowed to go there.  

Yes, and that was the premise I was suggesting when I had floated the idea of Gared using the Black Gate in the past.

I'm personally not sold on the theory that the mother direwolf was sent, nor the theory that Gared killed her with an antler dagger, but if the prior two premises turned out to be true, and Gared has been made a pawn of the CotF/BR - perhaps forcefully, since his encounter with the Others would have left him harrowed and mentally vulnerable - then I would assume that one prospect for Gared and the mother passing the Wall would be for Gared to be guided to the Black Gate.

[alienarea]

And maybe Gared watched the White Walkers with blue-eyed Will and Royce and before they close in on him Coldhands saves him and tasks him to bring a huge pregnant direwolf across the wall and then kill it with an antler ...

[Melifeather]

8 minutes ago, alienarea said:

And maybe Gared watched the White Walkers with blue-eyed Will and Royce and before they close in on him Coldhands saves him and tasks him to bring a huge pregnant direwolf across the wall and then kill it with an antler ...

That wouldn't explain the decayed condition of the body of the mother direwolf. The scent of corruption was noticeable. So, are you saying Gared hung around Winterfell several days until he was captured just so they could find the dead direwolf? They didn't see or smell the dead direwolf nor hear it's pups until on the return trip - which indicates to me a more magical presentation.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence

Nah, I think the arithmetic is straightfoward. The first appears, then the others identical to the first. [a full stop], three, four. five as he counts them, plus the first. And then there's the pack behaviour.

[Black Crow]

56 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

That wouldn't explain the decayed condition of the body of the mother direwolf. The scent of corruption was noticeable. So, are you saying Gared hung around Winterfell several days until he was captured just so they could find the dead direwolf? They didn't see or smell the dead direwolf nor hear it's pups until on the return trip - which indicates to me a more magical presentation.

Well if you're looking for a "magical presentation", on the outbound trip they may not have smelled anything if it had starry blue eyes at that point. Then once the pups are delivered the magic dies and nature resumes its course.

[Melifeather]

3 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Nah, I think the arithmetic is straightfoward. The first appears, then the others identical to the first. [a full stop], three, four. five as he counts them, plus the first. And then there's the pack behaviour.

After realizing the parallel to Sam, I'm more inclined to agree with you. Sam's killing is meant to be a parallel to when Ned killed Lady.

The white walkers and the direwolves are parallels to each other, while the dragons are their inversion. 

3 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Well if you're looking for a "magical presentation", on the outbound trip they may not have smelled anything if it had starry blue eyes at that point. Then once the pups are delivered the magic dies and nature resumes its course.

To clarify meaning, you think the white walkers themselves walked past the Wall and reassembled themselves into the forms of the direwolf pups? 

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

To clarify meaning, you think the white walkers themselves walked past the Wall and reassembled themselves into the forms of the direwolf pups? 

Not quite, but if the white walkers are themselves very powerful wargs...

[alienarea]

50 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Not quite, but if the white walkers are themselves very powerful wargs...

Also, we do not know where the underground paths from the cave Bloodraven is in lead to.

Ghost points to a connection.