Heresy 233 A Walk on the White Sid[h]e

[LynnS]

Or well get Winter in spring.

[Melifeather]

23 hours ago, LynnS said:

Or well get Winter in spring.

I’d prefer Christmas. A girl can dream, can’t she?

[Black Crow]

Dreaming of a white one...?

[LynnS]

 

[Tucu]

6 hours ago, Melifeather said:

I’d prefer Christmas. A girl can dream, can’t she?

As long as your are thinking about 2021...

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I was really on a roll back in June and July.   Progress has continued since then, but more slowly… I suffered a gut punch in early August that really had me down for a time, and another, for different reasons, in early September.   But I slogged on, and of late I am picking up steam again.

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2020/11/08/back-to-westeros/

[LynnS]

Boy, I remember looking for gravitational lenses on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey years ago.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/ras-sdm110520.php

https://blog.galaxyzoo.org/tag/lens/

[alienarea]

11 hours ago, Tucu said:

As long as your are thinking about 2021...

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2020/11/08/back-to-westeros/

I want to believe

[Tucu]

I finished catching-up with this thread and I have some quotes on shadows and watchers that seem relevant

 

AREO HOTAH IN THE WATCHER

I will start with Areo Hotah in The Watcher chapter. For the whole chapter he stands in the shadow, watching his master play his games:

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Areo Hotah ran his hand along the smooth shaft of his longaxe, his ash-and-iron wife, all the while watching. He watched the white knight, Ser Balon Swann, and the others who had come with him. He watched the Sand Snakes, each at a different table. He watched the lords and ladies, the serving men, the old blind seneschal, and the young maester Myles, with his silky beard and servile smile. Standing half in light and half in shadow, he saw all of them. Serve. Protect. Obey. That was his task.

Areo is Doran's watcher, shadow, protector. Doran himself plays the game from a position of weakness so he tries  to play secretively. I think we will find parallels in the Others and the WW.

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Later, when Arianne had gone, he put down his longaxe and lifted Prince Doran into his bed. "Until the Mountain crushed my brother's skull, no Dornishmen had died in this War of the Five Kings," the prince murmured softly, as Hotah pulled a blanket over him. "Tell me, Captain, is that my shame or my glory?"
"That is not for me to say, my prince." Serve. Protect. Obey. Simple vows for simple men. That was all he knew.

 

THE SHADOWS ARE WATCHING

The first time GRRM use the word watchers is in the prologue. Not for the Night's watch, but for the WW/white shadows:

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All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too

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Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.

Notice that even though they are called white walkers and white shadows, their appeareance is a trick of moonlight and shadow:

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A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took

Note the grey-green tones in the armor for a later reference.

THE CARGO CULT SHADOW WATCHERS

Now we get to the current watchers in the wall:

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Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn

They remember some words, but they are now mainly a shadow of what they were:

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The Night's Watch is a shadow of what it once was

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"We never knew! But we must have known once. The Night's Watch has forgotten its true purpose

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The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan's scariest stories. It was here that Night's King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man

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All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye

 

THE TREES, THEIR WATCHERS AND THEIR ICE ARMOR

For last I left the watchers that protect the weirwoods and greenseers:

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In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face.

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"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.

There is also the 3 tree "watchers" on the way to Mole town that were already mentioned a few pages ago.

Going back to the prologue we have to remember that Weymar shot first (while calling the gods):

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"Gods!" he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.

Later we get images of shadows, weirwoods and watchers in ice armor:

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When Varamyr pushed at it, the snow crumbled and gave way, still soft and wet. Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin clouds danced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watched coldly. He could see the humped shapes of other huts buried beneath drifts of snow, and beyond them the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice

 

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Jon was armored in black ice

I like the world play in you can do with "the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice"

[LynnS]

39 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I like the world play in you can do with "the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice"

This is very interesting .  The use of the word "watcher" has been on my mind as well.  Areo Hotah seems to describe the state of mind of the watcher pretty well.  I think we could add the 79  watchers buried in the wall to the list.  I will come back later.  Something new to think about.  Well done!

[Tucu]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

This is very interesting .  The use of the word "watcher" has been on my mind as well.  Areo Hotah seems to describe the state of mind of the watcher pretty well.  I think we could add the 79  watchers buried in the wall to the list.  I will come back later.  Something new to think about.  Well done!

Ah, yes...the 79 watchers transformed into icy sentinels open a whole bunch of icy watcher quotes.

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"There are ghosts here," Bran said. Hodor had heard all the stories before, but Jojen might not have. "Old ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon, seventy-nine deserters who went south to be outlaws. One was Lord Ryswell's youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands they sought shelter at his castle, but Lord Ryswell took them captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them and sealed them up alive in the ice. They have spears and horns and they all face north. The seventy-nine sentinels, they're called. They left their posts in life, so in death their watch goes on forever

In ADWD we got a lot of references to snowy grey-green sentinels

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 Snowflakes drifted down soundlessly to cloak the soldier pines and sentinels in white

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The soldier pines and sentinels wore thick white coats

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In the godswood the snow was still dissolving as it touched the earth. Steam rose off the hot pools, fragrant with the smell of moss and mud and decay. A warm fog hung in the air, turning the trees into sentinels, tall soldiers shrouded in cloaks of gloom.

The transformation of the snowy sentinels built by the squires (children?) in the Winterfell walls is also interesting.

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Above, he could see some squires building snowmen along the battlements. They were arming them with spears and shields, putting iron halfhelms on their heads, and arraying them along the inner wall, a rank of snowy sentinels. "Lord Winter has joined us with his levies," 

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More snowmen had risen in the yard by the time Theon Greyjoy made his way back. To command the snowy sentinels on the walls, the squires had erected a dozen snowy lords. One was plainly meant to be Lord Manderly; it was the fattest snowman that Theon had ever seen. The one-armed lord could only be Harwood Stout, the snow lady Barbrey Dustin. And the one closest to the door with the beard made of icicles had to be old Whoresbane Umber.

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leaving the wallwalks to the snowy sentinels the squires had thrown up, who grew larger and stranger every night as wind and weather worked their will upon them. Ragged beards of ice grew down the spears clasped in their snowy fists

Snowy sentinels transformed by the will of the wind :-).This takes us to TreeBran:

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"Theon," a voice seemed to whisper.

His head snapped up. "Who said that?" All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as cold as hate. A god's voice, or a ghost's. How many died the day that he took Winterfell? How many more the day he lost it? The day that Theon Greyjoy died, to be reborn as Reek. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with shriek.

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The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. “Theon,” they seemed to whisper, “Theon.”

The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. “Please.” He fell to his knees. “A sword, that’s all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek.” Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. “I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands.”

A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. “… Bran,” the tree murmured. They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran’s ghost, he thought, but that was madness.

Will Theon the turncloak and Theon the ghost be transformed into an icy watcher?

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“Take him out across the lake to the islet where the weirwood grows, and strike his head off with that sorcerous sword you bear. That is how Eddard Stark would have done it. Theon slew Lord Eddard’s sons. Give him to Lord Eddard’s gods. The old gods of the north. Give him to the tree.”

And suddenly there came a wild thumping, as the maester’s ravens hopped and flapped inside their cages, their black feathers flying as they beat against the bars with loud and raucous caws. “The tree,” one squawked, “the tree, the tree,” whilst the second screamed only, “Theon, Theon, Theon.”

 

[alienarea]

Dany came from Valyria, VLA

Hitchhiked her way across Slavers Bay

Birthed some dragons on the way

Conquered Mereen then she was a  like queen

She said: "Jon, take a walk on the wild Sidhe"

But Jon don't know nothing and asked:

"What do you mean, take a walk on the wild Sidhe?"

And the dragons go: 

"Doo do doo do doo do do doo..."

 

 

[Black Crow]

Haar... 

[Black Crow]

On 11/10/2020 at 2:21 PM, Tucu said:

 

Will Theon the turncloak and Theon the ghost be transformed into an icy watcher?

 

Cutting his head off will presumably stop him rising as a wight, but on the other hand he's being "given to the wood"

[alienarea]

Though the TWoW sample chapter is a very good chapter, I am very torn on Theon's fate. On the one hand he needs to die the sooner the better, on the Other hand he should be the one offing Ramsay with a gray goose feathered arrow.

Would an icy Theon still be able to do that?

[Melifeather]

10 minutes ago, alienarea said:

Though the TWoW sample chapter is a very good chapter, I am very torn on Theon's fate. On the one hand he needs to die the sooner the better, on the Other hand he should be the one offing Ramsay with a gray goose feathered arrow.

Would an icy Theon still be able to do that?

It is so funny how two threads can suddenly be discussing the same topic. The Time and Casualty thread brought up Theon and his taking two steps at a time and perhaps being able to break time loops, but I said I thought the two steps at a time was a symbol of his split personality. Theon knows he's Reek, but he's hiding another identity, even from himself: the Ghost in Winterfell. 

[Tucu]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Cutting his head off will presumably stop him rising as a wight, but on the other hand he's being "given to the wood"

Theon II, TWOW: "Tis but a scratch. I had worse. What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!"

[Tucu]

Continuing with Theon and Bran shared destiny...in one of Bran's dreams we get several mentions of the howling "grey mist"

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The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there.

....

The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry.

Not cry. Fly.

...

Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist

...

Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow, tearful.

...

The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil

During fArya's wedding, a mist makes Winterfell all grey:

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But under the hood, his hair was white and thin, and his flesh had an old man’s greyish undertone. A Stark at last, he thought.

...

He had never seen the godswood like this, though— grey and ghostly, filled with warm mists and floating lights and whispered voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Beneath the trees, the hot springs steamed. Warm vapors rose from the earth, shrouding the trees in their moist breath, creeping up the walls to draw grey curtains across the watching windows.

...

All the color had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. The Stark colors. Theon did not know whether he ought to find that ominous or reassuring. Even the sky was grey. Grey and grey and greyer. The whole world grey, everywhere you look

After the ceremony under the weirwood, Theon hears a voice calling his name and he gets out of the godswood scared:

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Suddenly he did not want to be here.

Once outside the godswood the cold descended on him like a ravening wolf and caught him in its teeth. He lowered his head into the wind and made for the Great Hall, hastening after the long line of candles and torches. Ice crunched beneath his boots, and a sudden gust pushed back his hood, as if a ghost had plucked at him with frozen fingers, hungry to gaze upon his face. Winterfell was full of ghosts for Theon Greyjoy.

 

cold ghosts with teeth :-)

[Black Crow]

15 hours ago, Tucu said:

Theon II, TWOW: "Tis but a scratch. I had worse. What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!"

Aye, but having your head cut off can't be dismissed as only a flesh wound 

[Tucu]

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Aye, but having your head cut off can't be dismissed as only a flesh wound 

Nothing that can't be fixed by a woods witch now that the old powers are waking ;-)

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"His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he'd fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t' life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o' Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn't talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you're a head, talking's all you got to pass the day".

 

[Black Crow]

 

2 hours ago, Tucu said:

Nothing that can't be fixed by a woods witch now that the old powers are waking ;-)

Ah, but they didn't go walking off again neither...

Seriously though, this harks back to the Mabinogion and Bran's fate - which that isn't at all inconsistent with what GRRM supposedly told the Mummers - assuming you know the story