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

[LynnS]

10 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Well, as I said , they do have their brothers to collect and guide them, and I've also commented before on the childlike behaviour of the gang scragging Ser Waymar and how GRRM has referenced a fascination with child soldiers

I still like the idea of souls contained in the ice bodies etc.  Also that they might be the cold version of green men.  We have also discussed the WW's as analogous to  Mel and the fiery lot.  I'm not sure how to interpret Martin's description of the Others as another form of life.  Mel isn't completely dead or transformed.  She had fiery spells have been inscribed on her skin and her heart is bathed in holy fire., But her blood is burned black.  She still feels tired, hungry and thirsty even though she isn't sustained by any of that.  She is alive, another form of life. 

I'm trying to understand how the WWs are another form of life, alive beyond being a soul living a second life in an icy shell. 

[LynnS]

To go back to @Frey family reunion idea of golems, maybe we are talking about dopplegangers: an apparition or double of a living person.

If Mel can produce black shadows; maybe there is a white shadow equivalent.  Craster's sons cast shadows of themselves and give them an icy shell.   They use a part of their own life force just as Mel does and they use ice and snow and cold to make their dopplegangers.  When the spell is broken, they return to their own living bodies.  

They feel pain:

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A Storm of Swords - Samwell I

The Other's sword gleamed with a faint blue glow. It moved toward Grenn, lightning quick, slashing. When the ice blue blade brushed the flames, a screech stabbed Sam's ears sharp as a needle. The head of the torch tumbled sideways to vanish beneath a deep drift of snow, the fire snuffed out at once. And all Grenn held was a short wooden stick. He flung it at the Other, cursing, as Small Paul charged in with his axe.

The fear that filled Sam then was worse than any fear he had ever felt before, and Samwell Tarly knew every kind of fear. "Mother have mercy," he wept, forgetting the old gods in his terror. "Father protect me, oh oh . . ." His fingers found his dagger and he filled his hand with that.

The wights had been slow clumsy things, but the Other was light as snow on the wind. It slid away from Paul's axe, armor rippling, and its crystal sword twisted and spun and slipped between the iron rings of Paul's mail, through leather and wool and bone and flesh. It came out his back with a hissssssssssss and Sam heard Paul say, "Oh," as he lost the axe. Impaled, his blood smoking around the sword, the big man tried to reach his killer with his hands and almost had before he fell. The weight of him tore the strange pale sword from the Other's grip.

Do it now. Stop crying and fight, you baby. Fight, craven. It was his father he heard, it was Alliser Thorne, it was his brother Dickon and the boy Rast. Craven, craven, craven. He giggled hysterically, wondering if they would make a wight of him, a huge fat white wight always tripping over its own dead feet. Do it, Sam. Was that Jon, now? Jon was dead. You can do it, you can, just do it. And then he was stumbling forward, falling more than running, really, closing his eyes and shoving the dagger blindly out before him with both hands. He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man's foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse.

When he opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.

Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."

Martin calls them sidhe made of ice.

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The Sidhe (shee) are considered to be a distinct race, quite separate from human beings yet who have had much contact with mortals over the centuries, and there are many documented testimonies to this. Belief in this race of beings who have powers beyond those of men to move quickly through the air and change their shape at will once played a huge part in the lives of people living in rural Ireland and Scotland.

These distinct categories of sidhe beings ties in with the testimonies of seers who divide the sidhe into wood spirits, water spirits, air spirits and so on, the elemental spirits of each place.

 

http://celticsociety.freeservers.com/sidhe.html

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Gilly has "seen them

I don't doubt Gilly has seen the white walkers, because when Jon asked, she said their eyes were "Blue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold.", but Gilly called them "the cold gods" - not potential brothers to her child. I think she may have been drawing parallels to the Faith of the Seven, because later (after she had her baby) she asked Sam why he only sang of six gods - weren't there seven? 
 

Quote

She tucked her nipple back inside her furs. "That was pretty, Sam. You sing good."

"You should hear Dareon. His voice is sweet as mead."

"We drank the sweetest mead the day Craster made me a wife. It was summer then, and not so cold." Gilly gave him a puzzled look. "Did you only sing of six gods? Craster always told us you southrons had seven."

"Seven," he agreed, "but no one sings of the Stranger." The Stranger's face was the face of death. Even talking of him made Sam uncomfortable. "We should eat something. A bite or two."

Gilly's cold gods walk the earth just as the Smith, Warrior, Father, Mother, Maiden, Crone, and Stranger were believed to have done. Her eyewitness account came during Jon's and Sam's first stop at the Keep. The assertion that the white walkers are Craster's sons came during their second stop and after the babe was born, but it wasn't said by Gilly. It was said by an older sister-wife:

Quote

"They?" said Sam, and the raven cocked its black head and echoed, "They. They. They."

"The boy's brothers," said the old woman on the left. "Craster's sons. The white cold's rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old bones don't lie. They'll be here soon, the sons."

This older wife obviously believes the white walkers are "Craster's sons", but how she developed that belief is not explained.

Gilly's reaction to the cold gods is that of fear - that her son will be sacrificed like the sheep, and very soon like the dogs. She is not concluding that her child will become a god. She thinks the cold gods are going to kill and eat her child! 

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I'm trying to understand how the WWs are another form of life, alive beyond being a soul living a second life in an icy shell. 

Surely that fact that they are alive [not dead] but not flesh and blood is sufficient.

A former fireman I used to know often used to speak of a never-ending discussion he and his colleagues used to have anent whether Fire was in fact alive

[LynnS]

Well, I have to convert a chicken into soup.  So, I'll check back later.  

[Black Crow]

Mmmm... chicken soup 

[Matthew.]

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

Also that they might be the cold version of green men.

I've been inclined toward this interpretation for a while as well, and the way I think of it is that the Green Men are to life, fertility, and spring as the Others are to death, blight and winter--but that both are connected to the trees and the old gods.

In particular, I view the Green Men as sentinels who were first made to defend the weirwood, to act as warriors in the stead of the declining CotF, with this myth as potential foreshadowing:

Quote

The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

So, I think the Green Men first appeared just before the Pact (and were expanded afterward on the Isle of Faces), and that the Others represent some later addition (aberration?) while being, nonetheless, rooted in a similar magic. In particular, I can't help but notice how cleanly the Wall separates the Haunted Forest - the largest remaining deep wood - from the rest of Westeros, with the name of the forest itself being evocative and suggestive.

[LynnS]

23 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

I've been inclined toward this interpretation for a while as well, and the way I think of it is that the Green Men are to life, fertility, and spring as the Others are to death, blight and winter--but that both are connected to the trees and the old gods.

In particular, I view the Green Men as sentinels who were first made to defend the weirwood, to act as warriors in the stead of the declining CotF, with this myth as potential foreshadowing:

Quote

The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

So, I think the Green Men first appeared just before the Pact (and were expanded afterward on the Isle of Faces), and that the Others represent some later addition (aberration?) while being, nonetheless, rooted in a similar magic. In particular, I can't help but notice how cleanly the Wall separates the Haunted Forest - the largest remaining deep wood - from the rest of Westeros, with the name of the forest itself being evocative and suggestive.

Wow! Just Wow!  What a pleasure it is to hear from you Matthew.  Your explanation and quote feels so right to me.  Wonderful insight.  

[LadySage]

15 hours ago, LynnS said:

Glad you are still with us in spirit!  I've wondered bout Ser Puddles as well.  Does plinking him with dragonglass destroy the soul within as well as break the spell holding ice and snow together; or does dragonglass just draw out the cold fire?  That is the question.

Have a great day!

  

Thank you, @LynnS You too...

[LadySage]

15 hours ago, Black Crow said:

The easy answer is that he woke up in the batcave muttering that the next time he met that fat kid it would be no more Mr. Nice Guy.

Seriously though, the way the ice crystals swirled off into the air after the spell was broken indicates that his spirit returned to the air and the real question is whether the spell can be recreated and by whom. Can Ser Puddles recast it himself ?

Thank you, @Black Crow Mayhaps another question we should be asking is, if the entity that Sam vanquised's right, proper monicker should be Ser Puddles Stark?

[corbon]

11 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I would have said that "...twins to the first. Three of them … four … five …" fits the bill, while as to Craster's wives, Gilly has "seen them" and its pretty obvious from "“The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the sons.” that they other women have too.

No, it isn't obvious. We have no indication in any form about why the women think that, and what data they base it on. It is at least as like as not that they have no actual knowledge of the White Walkers beyond the odd far and fear-ed sighting, and they base the "brother's" statement entirely on Craster taking the boys out to die.... I mean 'be sacrificed to the Cold Gods'. That the babes are transformed into something powerful, and remain together, is more palatable than murder, psychologically speaking, and humans are prone to believing what they psychologically need, regardless of evidence or the lack thereof.

Congratulations though. You've got me and @Melifeather arguing the same angle from the same data. I didn't think that was psychologically possible.     

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, corbon said:

Congratulations though. You've got me and @Melifeather arguing the same angle from the same data. I didn't think that was psychologically possible.     

My pleasure, but you'll appreciate I hold to my opinion 

[Black Crow]

8 hours ago, LadySage said:

Thank you, @Black Crow Mayhaps another question we should be asking is, if the entity that Sam vanquised's right, proper monicker should be Ser Puddles Stark?

Depends who he is, He may well be an old Stark, but if the's one of Craster's sons then the question shifts slightly to ask why Craster's bloodline is so important - why his sons? As suggested earlier he may be a descendant of the Stark known as the Nights King and in that light his name could be a deliberate corruption - sounding rather like Karstark. [yes I know why the Karstarks are so named, but the resemblance still feels like a clue]

[Black Crow]

11 hours ago, Matthew. said:

I've been inclined toward this interpretation for a while as well, and the way I think of it is that the Green Men are to life, fertility, and spring as the Others are to death, blight and winter--but that both are connected to the trees and the old gods.

In particular, I view the Green Men as sentinels who were first made to defend the weirwood, to act as warriors in the stead of the declining CotF, with this myth as potential foreshadowing:

So, I think the Green Men first appeared just before the Pact (and were expanded afterward on the Isle of Faces), and that the Others represent some later addition (aberration?) while being, nonetheless, rooted in a similar magic. In particular, I can't help but notice how cleanly the Wall separates the Haunted Forest - the largest remaining deep wood - from the rest of Westeros, with the name of the forest itself being evocative and suggestive.

Yes, I think that in principle this is about right. I can see the logic of magic enabling free wargs [to coin a phrase] moving through the air at will and creating bodies at will from leaves and other green stuff rather than occupying animal hosts. Doing the same thing with ice crystals and snow in winter is perhaps no more than an extension of that. However, I can't help but feel that there's something more to it than "winterising" and that while the magic may be the same, the green and the white shadows are at least "different" if not actually opposed. 

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Depends who he is, He may well be an old Stark, but if the's one of Craster's sons then the question shifts slightly to ask why Craster's bloodline is so important - why his sons? As suggested earlier he may be a descendant of the Stark known as the Nights King and in that light his name could be a deliberate corruption - sounding rather like Karstark. [yes I know why the Karstarks are so named, but the resemblance still feels like a clue]

I think we are back to the power of king's blood. Marwyn tells Sam that all Valyrian magic is rooted in blood and fire.  I think the same is true of it's opposite, blood and ice.  It's Ygritte who tells Jon that the Wall is made of blood.  It's also Melisandre who tells Jon that he can access the magic of the Wall if he chooses. 

So it may be that the White Walkers were first created as a defence against the First Men which brought with the it the first long night and the Last Hero.  Followed by the Pact and the building of the Wall and Winterfell. 

We are not going to have the Night's King strolling off the pages; but he is still the boogeyman of the story. The one who's name has been removed from all records, the ancient enemy, the heart of winter and the soul of ice.  Whose name can't or musn't be spoken.

Ned dreams of the frozen hell reserved for Starks; the ninth circle of hell in Dante's inferno.  The place reserved for betrayers, traitors and oathbreakers,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)#Seventh_Circle_(Violence)

Potentially, he still exists as a soul trapped in ice and this may be what Bran saw in the heart of winter; his boogeyman and the one he must defeat. The thing that is devoid of all love and warmth; howling alone in the darkness; devouring all life, trapped in a death that is worse than death.

Is it possible that the Night King accessed the power of the Wall?  They may have killed his body, but what did they do with his soul?

 

[LynnS]

Two more questions:

- If it took the combined resources of the Stark in Winterfell and the King Beyond the Wall to defeat the Night's King; what manpower and resources did the 13th Lord Commander have at his disposal if it wasn't the WW's and their thralls?

- If magic is a sword without a hilt; did the NK access the power of the Wall and did it backfire?  Was it something he couldn't control?

[Melifeather]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Depends who he is, He may well be an old Stark, but if the's one of Craster's sons then the question shifts slightly to ask why Craster's bloodline is so important - why his sons? As suggested earlier he may be a descendant of the Stark known as the Nights King and in that light his name could be a deliberate corruption - sounding rather like Karstark. [yes I know why the Karstarks are so named, but the resemblance still feels like a clue]

IMO Craster inherited his "black blood" from his father, who broke his Nights Watch vows and fathered him.

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"Craster weds his daughters," Jon pointed out.

She punched him again. "Craster's more your kind than ours. His father was a crow who stole a woman out of Whitetree village, but after he had her he flew back t' his Wall. She went t' Castle Black once t' show the crow his son, but the brothers blew their horns and run her off. Craster's blood is black, and he bears a heavy curse." She ran her fingers lightly across his stomach. "I feared you'd do the same once. Fly back to the Wall. You never knew what t' do after you stole me."

As readers we assume Craster sacrifices his sons due to this ‘heavy curse’. Sometimes it can be enlightening to review the definitions of the words chosen by the author, so lets look at both ‘heavy’ and ‘curse’.

Heavy is characterized as having great mass or weight - typically greater than normal mass for a particular element, for example: lead or gold. It can also mean difficult to bear, characterized with severe pain or suffering.

Curse can mean several things, but most commonly it’s an invocation that brings harm or injury to someone. Curses are sometimes said to be retribution or punishment for inflicting evil or misfortune upon others, so what does this have to do with Craster?

Craster had the misfortune of being a bastard with cursed black blood, because his father was a man of the Watch that broke his oath. The blood of the Watch is black, because by swearing an oath they sever ties with their blood relatives and adopt the Watch as their brothers, creating a new family who all wear black versus wearing the colors of their severed family’s House. When people are cut (severed) and their blood is exposed to oxygen it turns a dark red, and in some lighting it even looks black. Craster has his father’s black blood in his veins and it's cursed, because his father avoided punishment. The men of the Watch take an oath to father no children and take no wives. Craster’s father broke that oath and then denied he broke it by refusing Craster as his son. His father escaped judgement and execution thereby causing the curse to fall upon Craster.

There is a recurrent thematic element of bastardy in ASOIAF, so it’s something we should pay attention to. Jon Snow and Ramsay Snow are bastards. Even though their parents come from different families they share the bastard last name of ‘Snow’, which makes them brothers in bastardy. The wildlings don’t look down on bastards nor do they single them out by giving them bastard last names, so the fact that Craster is a bastard is not what makes him so cursed. The curse comes from his father’s oathbreaking, which is why his father denied him. Oathbreakers are executed. We know this, because Ned beheaded Gared after he defected and ran in fear from the white walkers and Arya murdered Dareon, the Watchman that defected to become a singer in Braavos.

In his twisted way, Craster claimed he was ‘right with the gods’. What could he possibly mean especially since he was cursed? He might’ve been a bastard, but he married his daughters, so in his eyes his children are not bastards - a topic he had strong opinions about:

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"My steward and squire, Jon Snow."

"A bastard, is it?" Craster looked Jon up and down. "Man wants to bed a woman, seems like he ought to take her to wife. That's what I do." He shooed Jon off with a wave. "Well, run and do your service, bastard, and see that axe is good and sharp now, I've no use for dull steel."

Craster was proud his children weren't bastards, so a son would be a precious and valuable possession. He may have believed he needed a great sacrifice to reverse his black blood curse, so he got right with the gods. And as long as he remained ‘godly’ he would be protected. We might even view Craster’s death was due to substituting sheep when he didn’t have any sons to sacrifice. In effect he was no longer protected, and was executed for his father’s oathbreaking.

We don’t know how long Craster had been leaving his sons exposed to the elements, but there are no sons at all at his holdfast whereas he has daughters old enough to marry and birth more children. We can conclude then that he had been leaving his sons exposed to die from the very beginning, and yet the return of white walkers is relatively new. IMO this means that the two things are not connected.

 

 

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Melifeather said:

We don’t know how long Craster had been leaving his sons exposed to the elements, but there are no sons at all at his holdfast whereas he has daughters old enough to marry and birth more children. We can conclude then that he had been leaving his sons exposed to die from the very beginning, and yet the return of white walkers is relatively new. IMO this means that the two things are not connected.

I'm not at all convinced that "the return of the white walkers is relatively new". We've discussed in the past how there does seem to be a long tradition of them being "native" to the Haunted Forest. Even Mormont, remember, wasn't ringing bells that the old semi-mythical enemy had suddenly returned after thousands of years. What bothered him was that they had been seen nearly as far south as Eastwatch.

As to Craster and the gods, taken in conjunction with what the women are saying, he regards himself as right with the gods, the cold ones who come in the night, because he gives them his sons and so doesn't need to flee south with Mance's people, who don't.

[Black Crow]

On a slight tangent from that, it occurs to me that if they are indeed spirits of the air, normally unseen because they're off the human spectrum, and only becoming visible to humans when they deliberately assume corporeal bodies of snow and ice - or of green leaves and moss - then they may be more ubiquitous than we know.

And as a further thought, I wonder whether the direwolves can see them 

[LynnS]

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon IV

He had once heard his uncle Benjen say that the Wall was a sword east of Castle Black, but a snake to the west. It was true. Sweeping in over one huge humped hill, the ice dipped down into a valley, climbed the knife edge of a long granite ridgeline for a league or more, ran along a jagged crest, dipped again into a valley deeper still, and then rose higher and higher, leaping from hill to hill as far as the eye could see, into the mountainous west.

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A Storm of Swords - Jon X

It was Dalla who answered him, Dalla great with child, lying on her pile of furs beside the brazier. "We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

I do think there is a connection between the soul of ice and the Wall.  It's possible the NK used the magics of the Wall and it backfired tying the soul  to the Wall and making him so powerful that he can't be destroyed without taking down the Wall.  The Wall also serves as a boundary that he or his minions, the cold gods and their thralls cannot pass.  

This seems like a paradox because the Wall is built to protect from something that is yet to happen.

I think there have been repeated incursions that have been met by the wildlings breaking themselves upon the Wall:

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A Clash of Kings - Jon III

"Wildlings have invaded the realm before." Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at Winterfell. "Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my grandfather's grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard."

"Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. Each man of them broke his strength on the Wall, or was broken by the power of Winterfell on the far side . . . but the Night's Watch is only a shadow of what we were, and who remains to oppose the wildlings besides us? The Lord of Winterfell is dead, and his heir has marched his strength south to fight the Lannisters. The wildlings may never again have such a chance as this. I knew Mance Rayder, Jon. He is an oathbreaker, yes . . . but he has eyes to see, and no man has ever dared to name him faintheart."

So why does Craster sacrifice to the cold gods?  Why do the wildlings allow it?  The Starks have forgotten their obligations to provide greenseers to the old gods. But the wildlings have not.  So they provide the Stark bloodline (by way of Craster) to appease the cold gods and honor the Pact at the same time, since they cannot escape over the Wall.