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The White Worm


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Vert interesting thread. I do believe bloodraven is the tec. If he was just trying to ensnare bran why keep his friends alive at all? Them being gone would make bran completely reliant upon bloodraven and his gang. Also I don't buy that he would train him to become more powerful. He would just take brans body if that was what he really wanted. Again just my opinion. I don't believe there is enough story left for more characters. Things are going to be much more simple. 

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46 minutes ago, Impbread said:

Vert interesting thread. I do believe bloodraven is the tec. If he was just trying to ensnare bran why keep his friends alive at all? Them being gone would make bran completely reliant upon bloodraven and his gang. Also I don't buy that he would train him to become more powerful. He would just take brans body if that was what he really wanted. Again just my opinion. I don't believe there is enough story left for more characters. Things are going to be much more simple. 

I think the answers to your questions lie within this important detail in Prologue of Dance.

Quote

Varamyr could take any beast he wanted, bend them to his will, make their flesh his own. Dog or wolf, bear or badger …
Thistle, he thought.
Haggon would call it an abomination, the blackest sin of all, but Haggon was dead, devoured, and burned. Mance would have cursed him as well, but Mance was slain or captured. No one will ever know. I will be Thistle the spearwife, and Varamyr Sixskins will be dead. His gift would perish with his body, he expected. He would lose his wolves, and live out the rest of his days as some scrawny, warty woman … but he would live. If she comes back. If I am still strong enough to take her.

A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

The magic gift is bound to the body.

And Bran is not just a skinshifter, but potentially a greenseer:

Quote

Dreams became lessons, lessons became dreams, things happened all at once or not at all. Had he done that or only dreamed it?
"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."
"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.
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."
Bran's eyes widened. "They're going to kill me?"


A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

And this distinction is important. While Bran was born a skinchanger, he is still learning to be a greenseer

Until he unlocks this power it seems plausible that the potential would be lost if Bloodraven body snatched him.

There is, of course, darker possible explanations to why the other humans are left alive. Body Snatching isn't the only abomination...

Quote

Leagues away, in a one-room hut of mud and straw with a thatched roof and a smoke hole and a floor of hard-packed earth, Varamyr shivered and coughed and licked his lips. His eyes were red, his lips cracked, his throat dry and parched, but the taste of blood and fat filled his mouth, even as his swollen belly cried for nourishment. A child's flesh, he thought, remembering Bump. Human meat. Had he sunk so low as to hunger after human meat? He could almost hear Haggon growling at him. "Men may eat the flesh of beasts and beasts the flesh of men, but the man who eats the flesh of man is an abomination."
Abomination. That had always been Haggon's favorite word. Abomination, abomination, abomination. To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all. Haggon was weak, afraid of his own power. He died weeping and alone when I ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his heart himself. He taught me much and more, and the last thing I learned from him was the taste of human flesh.

A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

But to be fair, Bloodraven isn't the only almost dead creature in a weirwood throne either:

Quote

Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. 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.

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Finally, I don't think the three eyed crow will be a new character at all, but rather one who was there right from the start.

"Crows are all liars," Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. "I know a story about a crow."

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So you think hes training bran so that he can control him once hes more powerful? I'm just asking. I really enjoyed this thread. Bran will be leaving that cave. Like dany left the house of the undying and like Arya will be leaving the faceless men. The Starks are just being trained to be the end game players they are meant to be. 

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2 hours ago, Impbread said:

Vert interesting thread. I do believe bloodraven is the tec. If he was just trying to ensnare bran why keep his friends alive at all? Them being gone would make bran completely reliant upon bloodraven and his gang. Also I don't buy that he would train him to become more powerful. He would just take brans body if that was what he really wanted. Again just my opinion. I don't believe there is enough story left for more characters. Things are going to be much more simple. 

In George's stories A Song for Lya, and The Men of Greywater Station, the hive-minded fungus wanted to absorb humans to gain their unique abilities--that is why the weirwood wants Bran, because he is the most powerful greenseer perhaps ever born--Bran can take over living men and steal their bodies--and the weirwood wants to steal that ability.

They are trying to take his body, they planted a "weirwood seed" inside him, but it will still take years for the roots to grow out of him and fully drain him.  He will not let that happen.

I don't think his friends are alive any more, except Hodor.  I think Jojen and Meera got killed and fed to Bran, and when Bran finds out he will turn on his captors and destroy them.  Jojen foresaw his death at the cave, and recall that the real-life constellation Cetus is the sea monster, and the star Mira (Meera) is in the neck of the sea monster--Mira is being swallowed by the sea monster.  And I think Bran will permanently body snatch Hodor to hack Bloodraven and the CoTF to pieces when he finds out, (and Bran mercy kills his own abandoned body).  That is why George dialed up the Bran and Meera romance in Dance, and had Bran think that he loved her several times, to make it more heart-breaking when he finds out he actually was tricked into eating her. 

In Norse myth, Fenrir the wolf eats Odin.  Bran is Fenrir and Bloodraven is Odin.  Bran as Summer defeats One-Eye, Odin has One-Eye, (and so does the God's Eye)

Brandon of the Bloody Blade killed so many CoTF he turned an entire lake red with blood. 

And Hodor hacking up the rotted tree is foreshadowing also:

"He could swing it for hours at a time. There was a rotted tree near the tumbled stones that he had hacked half to pieces.
Even when he went outside they could hear him through the walls, bellowing "HODOR!" as he cut and slashed at his tree."
 
(The rotten tree is Bloodraven.)
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On 6/19/2021 at 7:12 PM, Seams said:

Baelor turned his attention to recovering Prince Aemon from his imprisonment. He had asked the Dornish prince to explicitly command the Dragonknight's release, and this Lord Wyl accepted. Yet instead of freeing Aemon himself, he gave Baelor the key to Aemon's cage, and an invitation to use it. But now, not only was Aemon naked in a cage, exposed to the hot sun by day and the cold wind by night, but also a pit had been dug beneath the cage, and within it were many vipers. The Dragonknight is said to have begged for the king to leave him, to go and seek aid in the Dornish Marches instead, but Baelor is said to have smiled and told him that the gods would protect him. Then he stepped into the pit.

Later, the singers claimed that the vipers bowed their heads to Baelor as he passed, but the truth is otherwise. Baelor was bitten half a dozen times while crossing to the cage, and though he opened it, he nearly collapsed before the Dragonknight was able to thrust open the door and pull his cousin from the pit. (The World of Ice and Fire - The Targaryen Kings: Baelor I)

 

So from celtic mythology, Balor of the Evil Eye was the leader of the Fomorians.  The Fomorians were monsters who were from underground or under the sea, and Balor had one eye that could shoot destructive beams of some sort.  Bloodraven is a one-eyed creature who lives underground.  (and Balor was killed by Lugh who launched a magic stone through his eye, more God's Eye meteor stuff)

[I was reading the Old Norse dictionary, and hrafn-vin = "raven wine" and is a poetic way of saying "blood"--and Bloodraven has a wine-colored raven on his face] 

Baelor is the parallel of Bloodraven, who goes into the viper pit (weirwood cave) and is bit many times by the serpents (weirwood roots).  It is said that the snake venom poisoned his mind, and he was killed by poison or starved to death. 

Baelor was followed as High Septon (Chief Greenseer) by a lackwit and then a small boy who could speak to birds--Bloodraven dies and is succeeded by Hodor and Bran.

 

The Sept of Baelor is a metaphor for a weirwood cave--with 7 crystal towers in a circle that gods live inside, and it is guarded by the Warrior's Sons ("the Swords") who are a metaphor for the White Walkers (shadow swords), and the Poor Fellows (the wights).  The White Walkers are created by the Greenseer, and answer to him.  (and there are explosives under the Sept of Baelor--explosives under the weirwood cave)

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11 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

In George's stories A Song for Lya, and The Men of Greywater Station, the hive-minded fungus wanted to absorb humans to gain their unique abilities--that is why the weirwood wants Bran, because he is the most powerful greenseer perhaps ever born--Bran can take over living men and steal their bodies--and the weirwood wants to steal that ability.

They are trying to take his body, they planted a "weirwood seed" inside him, but it will still take years for the roots to grow out of him and fully drain him.  He will not let that happen.

I don't think his friends are alive any more, except Hodor.  I think Jojen and Meera got killed and fed to Bran, and when Bran finds out he will turn on his captors and destroy them.  Jojen foresaw his death at the cave, and recall that the real-life constellation Cetus is the sea monster, and the star Mira (Meera) is in the neck of the sea monster--Mira is being swallowed by the sea monster.  And I think Bran will permanently body snatch Hodor to hack Bloodraven and the CoTF to pieces when he finds out, (and Bran mercy kills his own abandoned body).  That is why George dialed up the Bran and Meera romance in Dance, and had Bran think that he loved her several times, to make it more heart-breaking when he finds out he actually was tricked into eating her. 

In Norse myth, Fenrir the wolf eats Odin.  Bran is Fenrir and Bloodraven is Odin.  Bran as Summer defeats One-Eye, Odin has One-Eye, (and so does the God's Eye)

Brandon of the Bloody Blade killed so many CoTF he turned an entire lake red with blood. 

And Hodor hacking up the rotted tree is foreshadowing also:

"He could swing it for hours at a time. There was a rotted tree near the tumbled stones that he had hacked half to pieces.
Even when he went outside they could hear him through the walls, bellowing "HODOR!" as he cut and slashed at his tree."
 
(The rotten tree is Bloodraven.)

Plausible idea and interesting. Still doesn't make sense to leave Brans companions alive. He is helpless without them. Really just taking out Hodor would do the trick. The trees remember but I don't think they hate or have need of vengeance. I hope we will find out sometime soon. 

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On 6/20/2021 at 7:36 PM, Quoth the raven, said:

There are caverns and caves in the north. The few who survive will adapt to the darkness in the same way cave characins did.  These real world fishes are blind and are very pale in color compared to other characins(Tetra).  Cannibalism will become necessary due to the lack of photosynthesis.  Bran and Manderly have already started.  

 

 

Bran will start to enjoy eating human flesh.  He already tasted Jojen.  

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  • 6 months later...

I finally solved the mystery of the name of the White Worm god of death Yaggalla from In the House of the Worm.

In Merle Prout's story House of the Worm that George's story is a spin-off from, the shrine to the White Worm is called a "heaped up grave"

And in Dinneen's Gaelic Dictionary uaigh means “grave, cave” and on the next page uaile means "heap"

uaigh + uaile = Yaggalla

It is just a literal translation of "heaped up grave"--ha, it was there the whole time.

 

Also, I said the yaga-la-hai, the worm children, are a death cult and all of their names relate to worms, or death.  Annelyn = annelid worm, Vermyllar = vermis means “worm” in Latin, Groff means “grave” in dutch and Old Norse, and in Swedish grof means "great, big, large, strong" and Groff is a giant. (and Groff is a bronze giant, like MacReady from Campbell's Who Goes There?)

I just realized that Annelyn sounds like annihil  and annul  both meaning "to reduce to nothing, annihilate, put out of existence, extinguish" 

And I found that in Welsh anneall means "ignorance, lack of knowledge" and Annelyn is mocked by the Meatbringer for his lack of knowledge. (parallels Jon knowing nothing, Annelyn goes deep underground to learn his heritage, and so will Jon with the crypts)

Ironically annillyn means "ugly" and Annelyn was described as being the most handsome man in their whole civilization. 

And annhuellu means "to uncover, to undeceive" and he learns the true history of the White Worm and his people.

 

I realized that the Meatbringer is described like a pig--he has mottled pink-brown skin and an enormous flat nose.  So add that to the list of characters like Sam, Tyrion, Varys, Laren Dorr, AriK neKrol, Arkin Ruark, Kleronomas,  etc. that are named or described as pigs, or dwarfs or cripples.

 

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