Did the Starks practice blood sacrifice?

[LynnS]

8 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

@sweetsunray, I don’t think I shared this w/ you before, but here it is if you or anyone else is interested. 

 Disclaimer: there are many more hints, but Reddit is so annoying I just gave up at some point.

 

Interesting.  Bran has had experience skinchanging with Hodor and Theon's mind is so injured and compromised that it would make it easier for Bran to take his body for a few moments to speak through Theon.  

I'm not sure that Bran would reveal himself; but it would be the old gods speaking to Stannis et al.  That would certainly be miraculous and a conversion moment.  

I doubt that anyone would want to execute the speaker for the gods after that.

[sweetsunray]

12 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

Everyone seemed like they kinda forgot GRRM emphasized that Jojen was missing in the cave.

And he emphasized via Leaf how dangerous it was to explore in the caves further below (twice). So, I'm more inclined to believe Jojen will die or is dying by fall in a dark cavern, his body lost. Nor is Jojen's blood that of a greenseer. The weirwood roots connected to Bloodraven though... the sap contains Bloodraven's blood. Makes more sense to use that to help Bran connect to a tree and greenseer talent, than Jojen. (courtesy @The Fattest Leech who thought of that)

12 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

cough cough Snowylocks killed Jojen and fed him to Bran in real time. Bloodraven & CotF are all liars cough cough

CotF speak the True Tongue. What's in a name of a language, right?

[LynnS]

37 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

The weirwood roots connected to Bloodraven though... the sap contains Bloodraven's blood. Makes more sense to use that to help Bran connect to a tree and greenseer talent, than Jojen.

This is making more and more sense to me.  Bran needs to be wed or connected to the tree through Bloodraven, not Jojen.
 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. The days marched past, one after the other, each shorter than the one before. The nights grew longer. No sunlight ever reached the caves beneath the hill. No moonlight ever touched those stony halls. Even the stars were strangers there. Those things belonged to the world above, where time ran in its iron circles, day to night to day to night to day.

"It is time," Lord Brynden said.

Something in his voice sent icy fingers running up Bran's back. "Time for what?"

"For the next step. For you to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer."

"The trees will teach him," said Leaf. She beckoned, and another of the singers padded forward, the white-haired one that Meera had named Snowylocks. She had a weirwood bowl in her hands, carved with a dozen faces, like the ones the heart trees wore. Inside was a white paste, thick and heavy, with dark red veins running through it. "You must eat of this," said Leaf. She handed Bran a wooden spoon.

 

This is the last Bran chapter in DwD and when Bloodraven says 'it is time';  BR  will soon expire and go into the tree and Bran takes over.  

[The Map Guy]

46 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

And he emphasized via Leaf how dangerous it was to explore in the caves further below (twice). So, I'm more inclined to believe Jojen will die or is dying by fall in a dark cavern, his body lost. Nor is Jojen's blood that of a greenseer. The weirwood roots connected to Bloodraven though... the sap contains Bloodraven's blood. Makes more sense to use that to help Bran connect to a tree and greenseer talent, than Jojen.

I'm more inclined to believe that Bloodraven and all the CotF have been lying to Bran since the beginning.

More importantly, they don't want Bran to fall into the cave and die. They need his body alive.

 

Also, do we have any historical data that states HUMANS can be greenseers too?

Even so ... what is the point of being a greenseer? Poor little boy Bran doesn't even want to be stuck in a tree.

One day I will be like him [Brynden]. The thought filled Bran with dread. Bad enough that he was broken, with his useless legs. Was he doomed to lose the rest too, to spend all of his years with a weirwood growing in him and through him? Lord Brynden drew his life from the tree, Leaf told them. He did not eat, he did not drink. He slept, he dreamed, he watched. 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. He had thought the three-eyed crow would be a sorcerer, a wise old wizard who could fix his legs, but that was some stupid child's dream, he realized now. I am too old for such fancies, he told himself. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. That was as good as being a knight. Almost as good, anyway.

Does anyone here in westeros.org want to volunteer to be struck in a single tree for the rest of their immortality ... in exchange for greenseer capabilities?

I don't.

I can sit in one spot on my couch and watch whatever TV cameras record for my television. The difference is that I can also leave my seat whenever I want to and go outside.

Even if I was crippled, I don't think I would spend the rest of my life in one spot watching TV.

 

He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

Any volunteers here want to be a greenseer?

46 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

CotF speak the True Tongue. What's in a name of a language, right?

Lol I have a comment here, but that would be saying too much. But here is a question for any keen ear listener ... why is Leaf the only CotF that speaks the Common Tongue?

[LynnS]

17 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

Lol I have a comment here, but that would be saying too much. But here is a question for any keen ear listener ... why is Leaf the only CotF that speaks the Common Tongue?

She tells Bran that she went out into the world to learn it.  I'm also guessing that she was a silent sister; the dwarf sister that Tyrion mentions hearing about.
 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."

 

[sweetsunray]

44 minutes ago, LynnS said:

She tells Bran that she went out into the world to learn it.  I'm also guessing that she was a silent sister; the dwarf sister that Tyrion mentions hearing about.

I guess Map Guy wishes to imply that because Leaf talks Common Tongue to Bran (instead of the True Tongue he doesn't understand) in order to lie to Bran (and Meera and Jojen). Well we know that her explanation of what CotF believe happens to the soul isn't a lie... we witnessed it with Varamyr. So, she ain't lying about that. Warning people to be careful in caves stretching out for miles and how it might be treacherous down there isn't a lie either. Anyone who has done a bit of caving (I've done so) knows it. It's a sensible warning. Leaf also never tells Bran what the red veins are, only that the paste is made of the tree's seeds. So, Leaf ain't lying about the red stuff, and mashed seeds like acorns for example do taste bitter. Don't think brains (which is usually what people who believe in Jojen Paste claim it to be) tastes bitter: fat and cholesterol don't taste bitter and that's what brain is made of mostly. Never tasted any brain myself, but most people who have eaten it compare its taste to pork fat and eggs, which in the US is the typical way to eat it - with scrambled eggs... and with George being such a food fan, I'm sure he knows what it tastes like.

So, nope, don't see any evidence of Leaf lying about anything she says. At worst she ommits some truths perhaps, here or there. And that makes sense. A people who know everything they ever say or claim can be checked via tree-google will not have a habbit of lying, but have a habbit of telling the truth. And if you've never really believe you can get away with lying and don't learn it, it's near impossible to mimic it. Lying seems a human thing and much more so south of the Neck.

[Ygrain]

5 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I think Bran will reach out to Theon once he is brought before the heart tree. And given what Theon has experienced in the godswood in Dance, namely, that he heard the heart tree whisper his name, that he saw Bran’s face, that he finds comfort in the Old Gods knowing his name, added to his wish to atone, he will willingly allow Bran to skinchange into him. It’s one thing for a raven to say a few words, but whole detailed conversations would be trickier. The same goes for the heart tree itself. 

That's an enticing thought, but what could Theon/Bran say to convince them that this is not just raving of a half-mad man trying to save his hide? Sure, if he could reveal some secrets of Winterfell, it would be worth to keep him alive just in case, but would that be enough?

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

All we have are stereotypical imagery, and I'm very, extremely wary when it comes to George using stereotypical imagery

This is the crux of the matter: why use this stereotypical imagery in the first place? Definitely not for Bran's benefit - Westeros does not have the sickle-wielding druid stereotype, he won't place the pieces together. It must be for the benefit of the reader then, just like when we see through Bran's eyes the twincest in the tower and know what it means while Bran does not. What would be the point of misleading the reader into a false conclusion, what purpose would it have in the story?

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

 Where it was performed, how it was performed and who performed it with what weapon (ceremonial Ice) makes no matter. If Ilyn Payne had been an old hag we'd still consider it an execution. If the hag used a sickle, we'd still consider it an execution. If the steps drank Ned's blood, we'd still consider it an execution.

Absolutely not. If we saw Ned executed by an old woman holding a sickle, we'd go, WTF?! because neither old women nor sickles are commonly used for executions. And we'd go WTF?! even more if the stairs drank blood because that's not what steps normally do (and neither do tree roots). Such deviations from the normal pattern would immediately set us on high alert wondering what is going on and what is the meaning behind that all.

 

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

At least I base it on a certain philosophy expressed in the books to construct it on. But yeah, it's a speculation.

I offer a different speculation, based on a philosophy I believe to play prominent role in the story: the absolute immorality of unwilling sacrifice. Time and again, we see the good guys rejecting such measures, no matter the cost, and given Bran's reaction, he is more likely to side with the likes of Jon and Davos rather than Mel, Stannis or Victaryon (or Euron )

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

As to the latter half: actually it does explain it within the perimeters of execution and the judge taking on the burden of his judgment. The greenseer can try to shut his eyes. He can put his hands on his ears and sing to himself to drown out the sounds. He cannot avoid the horror of the taste forced on him. It is after all a horror. Bran responds horrified. Do you think any greenseer initiated before Bran or the actual greenseer who lived during the time of the event were any less horrified? Do you believe they licked their lips and thought - Yeah! More! More! Keep it coming! They're not vampires.

That's kinda beside the point. How the heck does a tree convey taste? Even magical trees have only been shown to function as cameras, with or without sound. How come it suddenly transmits taste, and why is this single occasion connected with blood?! That's what's so, forgive the pun, bloody suspicious, and makes me think there is more to it than just merely a lesson for the greenseer not to take a life lightly.

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Yes, the blood plays a role, in that we are shown and told that someone's spirit/conscious/memory of its id returns to earth - the stone, the soil and the trees. With the blood flowing into the roots of the tree, and the greenseer tasting his blood, that person is now forever that greenseer's companion, and the many greenseers that come after him for as long as that weirwood lives. The greenseer is in no way allowed to forget the ghost of this dead man. It's comparable to a Faceless Man putting on the face of a dead person, and reliving the last moments of that dead person - their pain, their broken hopes, their humanity, their pettiness, their evil (depending on who they were).

Oh, I fully agree that it is pretty possible that this may be the way to get the person into the tree, but there may be various other options. Adding someone's mind/soul may broaden the matrix of the weirnet. It may awaken the tree to its potential. It may provide energy/fertiliser. Using it for the greenseer to remember sounds almost too... idealistic.

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

it will be an almost voluntarily act of Theon walking into a fire

Just two words: Nissa Nissa. It was a willing sacrifice that brought the real result, though I do not think that Theon is destined to die just yet.

 

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

the fact that old Karstark walks and looks suspicously like Theon.

Ah... that would be clever!

 

3 hours ago, The Map Guy said:

 "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

This caught my attention - may it work the other way round?

[The Map Guy]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

She tells Bran that she went out into the world to learn it.  I'm also guessing that she was a silent sister; the dwarf sister that Tyrion mentions hearing about

How do CotF eyes look like again? Color?

Eyes are the only thing visible on a silent sister.  

58 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Don't think brains (which is usually what people who believe in Jojen Paste claim it to be) tastes bitter: fat and cholesterol don't taste bitter and that's what brain is made of mostly. Never tasted any brain myself, but most people who have eaten it compare its taste to pork fat and eggs, which in the US is the typical way to eat it - with scrambled eggs... and with George being such a food fan, I'm sure he knows what it tastes like.

OMG, people thought Jojen paste = Jojen brains? Hahahaha ... could we even say "Hannibal Lecter is catering??" ... sorry inside joke lol

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

So, Leaf ain't lying about the red stuff, and mashed seeds like acorns for example do taste bitter

 Well it could be anything. Daenerys ate bitter berries and it made her feel ill. She started hallucinating.

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

So, nope, don't see any evidence of Leaf lying about anything she says. At worst she ommits some truths perhaps, here or there.

"Leaf" and Bloodraven says anything to make Bran feel comfortable ... whether it is some truth sprinkled with some lie, or some lie sprinkled with some truth.

"Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger," Lord Brynden said one day, after Bran had learned to fly, "and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer."
"I thought the greenseers were the wizards of the children," Bran said. "The singers, I mean."
"In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers."
Bran did not understand, so he asked the Reeds. "Do you like to read books, Bran?" Jojen asked him.

Way to make Bran feel special huh? 1/1000 x 1/1000?

And come on Bloodraven! Bran asked if greenseers are limited to the CotF species? Can humans be greenseers too? There have been none in recorded human history. Way to deflect the question and never answer it Bloodraven! Whatever ... as long as "Leaf" gets Bran to eat the paste ... right?

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

Lying seems a human thing

.... exactly

[The Map Guy]

10 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

3 hours ago, The Map Guy said:

"This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

This caught my attention - may it work the other way round?

I don't quite follow. Are you suggesting that Bran never needed the weirwood paste (and become a tree) to use weirwood.net?
Because if you are, I think so too.
Using weirwood.net could simply just be skinchanging into a weirwood tree ... or skinchanging into a CotF and use their innate magic to watch weirwood CCTV.

[kissdbyfire]

10 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

I don't quite follow. Are you suggesting that Bran never needed the weirwood paste (and become a tree) to use weirwood.net?
Because if you are, I think so too.

We know he didn’t need the paste, we’ve seen him do it before he ate it. Only we didn’t see it from Bran’s PoV but Theon’s. 

 

[The Fattest Leech]

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

And he emphasized via Leaf how dangerous it was to explore in the caves further below (twice). So, I'm more inclined to believe Jojen will die or is dying by fall in a dark cavern, his body lost. Nor is Jojen's blood that of a greenseer. The weirwood roots connected to Bloodraven though... the sap contains Bloodraven's blood. Makes more sense to use that to help Bran connect to a tree and greenseer talent, than Jojen. (courtesy @The Fattest Leech who thought of that)

CotF speak the True Tongue. What's in a name of a language, right?

Right! And it seems some posters have forgotten the northern idea of sacrificing oneself to be able to let the young survive. Taking care of your next generation instead of “consuming” them as fire tends to do in Martinworld. 

[LynnS]

32 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

How do CotF eyes look like again? Color?

I think you can look this up yourself. https://asearchoficeandfire.com/

[kissdbyfire]

6 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Right! And it seems some posters have forgotten the northern idea of sacrificing oneself to be able to let the young survive. Taking care of your next generation instead of “consuming” them as fire tends to do in Martinworld. 

Exactly that. One can even make the argument that, if the heart trees require sacrifices, the older folk who “go hunting” never to return, just so their kin have a little bit more food should really be sacrificed before a weirwood. 

 

[Ygrain]

30 minutes ago, The Map Guy said:

I don't quite follow. Are you suggesting that Bran never needed the weirwood paste (and become a tree) to use weirwood.net?
Because if you are, I think so too.
Using weirwood.net could simply just be skinchanging into a weirwood tree ... or skinchanging into a CotF and use their innate magic to watch weirwood CCTV.

Bran supposedly needed a part of a tree to awaken his gift. Perhaps a tree needed a part of a man (blood?) to awaken its gift?

18 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

We know he didn’t need the paste, we’ve seen him do it before he ate it. Only we didn’t see it from Bran’s PoV but Theon’s. 

What was the timeline, though?

[Alexis-something-Rose]

32 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

We know he didn’t need the paste, we’ve seen him do it before he ate it. Only we didn’t see it from Bran’s PoV but Theon’s. 

Bran didn't need the paste when he and Jon connected either, and while Jon was beyond the Wall to boot. He opened his third eye, communicated with his brother while in the Winterfell crypt. No paste and no sacrifice required.

[kissdbyfire]

17 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

What was the timeline, though?

I stand corrected. I thought the scene I was thinking about took place before Bran’s final chapter, but it doesn’t. Still, what @Alexis-something-Rose said. 

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

Bran didn't need the paste when he and Jon connected either, and while Jon was beyond the Wall to boot. He opened his third eye, communicated with his brother while in the Winterfell crypt. No paste and no sacrifice required.

I hate bringing this up because it's so off topic and people are averse to the notion that greenseers experience time differently.

Opening the third eye is the first step.  He certainly couldn't travel the tree roots and see into the past when he was in the crypts.  This only happens after he takes the weirwood paste.  Something that is yet to happen because he hasn't passed the Wall yet. 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. The days marched past, one after the other, each shorter than the one before. The nights grew longer. No sunlight ever reached the caves beneath the hill. No moonlight ever touched those stony halls. Even the stars were strangers there. Those things belonged to the world above, where time ran in its iron circles, day to night to day to night to day.

"It is time," Lord Brynden said.

Something in his voice sent icy fingers running up Bran's back. "Time for what?"

"For the next step. For you to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer."

"The trees will teach him," said Leaf. She beckoned, and another of the singers padded forward, the white-haired one that Meera had named Snowylocks. She had a weirwood bowl in her hands, carved with a dozen faces, like the ones the heart trees wore. Inside was a white paste, thick and heavy, with dark red veins running through it. "You must eat of this," said Leaf. She handed Bran a wooden spoon.

I doubt  very much that Bran talked to Jon at the Skirling Pass before he learned what it meant to be a greenseer or was wed to the tree.

I think Bran dreamed that he may have touched Ghost and talked to Jon because greenseers experience time differently.  What Bran experiences in the crypt is a memory of the future.  Something he has yet to do.   When Bran is wed to the tree, he appears to Jon as the tree and he activates Jon's third eye.  He doesn't have this power yet when he dreams of Jon in the crypts.  He is only able to warg ghost at will at this point.  This is why Bloodraven tells him he has to go the next step past skinchanging.  

This tells us that Bran isn't experiencing time in a normal manner:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

The sapling is growing before Jon's eyes and isn't this similar to what Bran sees in reverse after taking the weirwood paste.  This isn't something Bran could do in the crypts.  Jon doesn't see Summer, he sees the weirwood.

So no, Bran doesn't come into his power until he takes the weirwood paste and he doesn't experience time differently until then.

And no this is not about time travel where Bran goes into the past and changes events.
 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"You saw what you wished to see. Your heart yearns for your father and your home, so that is what you saw."

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

Past, present and future are all one to Bran and the reason he has memories of the future from the crypts.

Bran doesn't even express a desire to show his siblings 'how to fly' until he gets to BR's cave.
 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"All," Lord Brynden said. "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."

Old Nan had told him the same story once, Bran remembered, but when he asked Robb if it was true, his brother laughed and asked him if he believed in grumkins too. He wished Robb were with them now. I'd tell him I could fly, but he wouldn't believe, so I'd have to show him. I bet that he could learn to fly too, him and Arya and Sansa, even baby Rickon and Jon Snow. We could all be ravens and live in Maester Luwin's rookery.

That was just another silly dream, though. Some days Bran wondered if all of this wasn't just some dream. Maybe he had fallen asleep out in the snows and dreamed himself a safe, warm place. You have to wake, he would tell himself, you have to wake right now, or you'll go dreaming into death. Once or twice he pinched his arm with his fingers, really hard, but the only thing that did was make his arm hurt. In the beginning he had tried to count the days by making note of when he woke and slept, but down here sleeping and waking had a way of melting into one another. Dreams became lessons, lessons became dreams, things happened all at once or not at all. Had he done that or only dreamed it?

 

Yes, the paste is necessary for Bran to advance and no, he didn't open Jon's third eye from the crypts. 

 

 

 

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

@LynnS, I don’t think that was a memory of the future. I believe that contact between Bran and Jon happened in real time. Just my 2p, of course.

[LynnS]

5 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

@LynnS, I don’t think that was a memory of the future. I believe that contact between Bran and Jon happened in real time. Just my 2p, of course.

Yes, I know.  This speaks to BR's point that 'men' only experience time in one direction.   It's how we interpret the event going in one direction and that speaks to Sweetsunray's point.   

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Exactly that. One can even make the argument that, if the heart trees require sacrifices, the older folk who “go hunting” never to return, just so their kin have a little bit more food should really be sacrificed before a weirwood. 

Perhaps the people are not as fucked-up as to feed their own folk to the trees but rather like to do that to foreigners and criminals? Also, one imagines, that weirwoods were watered with blood not just in winter but in spring and summer and autumn, too. Those trees have to grow, after all.

Not to mention that something happened to end the barbarism and savagery of the Northmen, at least. And it was not the Targaryen Conquest. They civilized themselves, it seems, while the good folk of Whitetree still feed people to their weirwoods.

We also don't know how people did it in the winters of old. Who is to say that a thousand years ago people didn't go hunting but asked their women to get their bronze sickles and give them red smiles out in the godswood? Perhaps the custom to go hunting only started when those blood sacrifices were no longer practiced?

The key mystery there is the question why the hell the Starks and the Northmen in general, having never cut ties with their First Men roots, no longer have any Children, greenseers, skinchangers, and other knowledge and traditions around. Nobody in the North understands anything about those ancient magical stuff.

And that actually makes no sense if one imagines that the Andals cut the First Men tradition down in the south - that never happened in the North, yet the Northmen are effectively Andals, too, aside from the fact that they do not follow the Seven. They aren't pious followers of the old gods in any sense. They do not sacrifice, they have no greenseers, and they understand essentially nothing about the old ways. They have even forgotten their own tongue and started speaking the Andal Common Tongue for no reason whatsoever.