Heresy 244 Big Scaly Beasties with Bad Breath

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

Since they show up before the dragons are hatched; my guess is that Jon's birth triggered their return.

Yes, they've been around for a while. We don't really know on account of their being mysterious like, but I get the impression that they've been around longer than Jon has, but what I think is important is that the supposed threat - this looming invasion by the six icy lads and now their growing collection of undead, is rather more recent than Jon's birth

[asongofheresy]

I don't know how relevant parentage discussion is right now, but I have a question, since Young Griff has parallels to Egg - both fathers died in rebellion, introduced wearing straw hats, hedge knight companion named Dunk/Duck - what if another parallel they have is their parentage? Egg was son of Maekar and Dyanna Dayne, what if Young Griff is son of Rhaegar and Ashara? 

[Black Crow]

All things are possible, but I think that you need more than a couple of possible parallels - and reasons/consequences

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

Since they show up before the dragons are hatched; my guess is that Jon's birth triggered their return.  That might be part of the meaning of Ned's old dream:

 

I like that. It doesn't seem logical to me that many Others could have been knocking around in the far north undetected for too long. Rhaegar and Lyanna begin the political story, maybe they begin the magical one as well. Again though, Craster. I wish we knew how he'd been running the keep.

[Brad Stark]

Back to parity between Starks and Targaryens - anyone else notice how conspicuously absent any marriages or children between these 2 families are?

Of course Targaryens mostly married Targaryens, with Velaryons making up most of the other marriages.  But Daenerys (assuming her parents are who we were told) has Martell and Arryn ancestors.  She likely has Tyrell and Tully ancestry through Blackwood and Hightower, respectively.  We have examples of Baratheons and Lannisters with Targaryen ancestry.  But the closest Stark gets is a rumored affair that likely never resulted in children and a marriage proposal that never came to be.  Stark and Targaryen are far more disconnected than any other pair of great Houses.  Does anyone else think GRRM may be avoiding (consciously or subconsciously) other mixing of these houses because of R+L=J?

 

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yes, they've been around for a while. We don't really know on account of their being mysterious like, but I get the impression that they've been around longer than Jon has, but what I think is important is that the supposed threat - this looming invasion by the six icy lads and now their growing collection of undead, is rather more recent than Jon's birth

They certainly didn't go away for good;  otherwise the Wall and the Watch would be gone and the Stark warning that Winter is Coming would be irrelevant.  

Something has certainly mobilized the Wildlings who haven't forgotten that menace and know something about the white shadows with teeth - the killing cold.  The dead have started to rise even if there have been no sightings of White Walkers until very recently.  The Rangers say the trees have eyes again and I'm not sure they are talking about weirwoods but perhaps WWs.

Craster has been  giving his sons away to someone or something for a long time.  I'm not sure it's the WWs who collect them.  The fact that undead Small Paul tracks down Gilly and Sam after the WW is kills;  seems more about stopping Sam from reaching the Wall with dragonglass than it does about coming for the babe as Gilly asserts.  She doesn't know the difference between a wight and a WW.  Craster believes he is protected but he has no son, he gives them sheep, dogs, etc.   Seems more likely to me that someone is stocking their winter larder.  Craster pays a heavy price.  I'm not sure what that means.

The dream of Ned's is an old green dream, that returns as his life is about to end and about the same time the comet appears - the blood streaked sky.  Lyanna's scream seems to be a warning - that the storm, will soon arrive.  It seems to me that their appearance on the scene, the disappearance of Rangers and Jon's imminent arrival at the Wall are connected in an expected or prophetic kind of way.  That somehow he is known to them.

Patchface knows who Jon is just as Dany's dragons know who she is:

 

Quote

 

A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

Jon had expected that. The direwolf made Queen Selyse anxious, almost as much as Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun. "Ghost, stay."

They found Her Grace sewing by the fire, whilst her fool danced about to music only he could hear, the cowbells on his antlers clanging. "The crow, the crow," Patchface cried when he saw Jon. "Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh." Princess Shireen was curled up in a window seat, her hood drawn up to hide the worst of the greyscale that had disfigured her face.

 

Perhaps the WWs know who Jon is as well.

 

[alienarea]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

They certainly didn't go away for good;  otherwise the Wall and the Watch would be gone and the Stark warning that Winter is Coming would be irrelevant.  

Something has certainly mobilized the Wildlings who haven't forgotten that menace and know something about the white shadows with teeth - the killing cold.  The dead have started to rise even if there have been no sightings of White Walkers until very recently.  The Rangers say the trees have eyes again and I'm not sure they are talking about weirwoods but perhaps WWs.

Craster has been  giving his sons away to someone or something for a long time.  I'm not sure it's the WWs who collect them.  The fact that undead Small Paul tracks down Gilly and Sam after the WW is kills;  seems more about stopping Sam from reaching the Wall with dragonglass than it does about coming for the babe as Gilly asserts.  She doesn't know the difference between a wight and a WW.  Craster believes he is protected but he has no son, he gives them sheep, dogs, etc.   Seems more likely to me that someone is stocking their winter larder.  Craster pays a heavy price.  I'm not sure what that means.

The dream of Ned's is an old green dream, that returns as his life is about to end and about the same time the comet appears - the blood streaked sky.  Lyanna's scream seems to be a warning - that the storm, will soon arrive.  It seems to me that their appearance on the scene, the disappearance of Rangers and Jon's imminent arrival at the Wall are connected in an expected or prophetic kind of way.  That somehow he is known to them.

Patchface knows who Jon is just as Dany's dragons know who she is:

 

Perhaps the WWs know who Jon is as well.

 

Didn't we conclude that 'under the sea' means 'dead'.

If Patchface uses crows and Starks synonymously, then all Starks are becoming white walkers when dead.

We have six white walkers in the prologue, six direwolf pups and six Stark children.

Ser Puddles is Rob.

[Nevets]

I noticed that the conception of the direwolf pups would have been around the time the Others started appearing in decent numbers.  Royce's meeting with the WW band was well before their birth but after their likely conception.  The wildling exodus and the sightings of WWs appear to be of recent vintage as well.  I see the pups and Others as being adversarial.  Possibility one arrived in response to the other.

Fire magic appears to have shown up a few months after Ice magic got going.  The dragons were born, the pyromancer magic got more effective, and R'hellor's priests got more effective (Thoros was as surprised as any when Beric came back from the dead).  I'm definitely sensing the possibility of a response here as well.  

The Red Comet is a wild card I haven't placed yet .

[Black Crow]

GRRM has been deliberately vague about the convergence of widely separated events, so the fact that the wolves turn up at the beginning of AGoT and the dragons at the end oughtn't to be regarded as significant in terms of timing or of cause and effect, other that both are engineered.

In Westeros six white walkers scrag a patrol from the Nights Watch in the Haunted Forest. At some point afterwards the only survivor turns up below the Wall and thereby leads the Starks to the six direwolf cubs sent to them by the Old Gods

In Essos, Danaerys Targaryen is given three dragon eggs which later mysteriously hatch into beasties not hitherto seen for hundreds of years. In terms of story pages the hatching obviously happens long after the appearance of the direwolves, but given that Danaerys was given the eggs at about the same time we can't conclude that the hatching is a reaction.

[Black Crow]

Just a thought running on from the above, but in a different direction...

We've [separately] discussed both the nature of the White Walkers and the arrival of the direwolf pups, but I think there's an interesting implication resulting.

We've been struck by the fact that the delivery of the six pups may be connected with the Prologue of AGOT in which that patrol is scragged by six White Walkers. When its pointed out that the six pups equate to the six children of Winterfell, there's general agreement that they're meant to have them and then later Jon Snow realises that his direwolf at least belongs to the Old Gods.

What of the other ones?

Separately, we've discussed the nature of White Walkers and come up with a pretty solid theory that they may be Wargs, released by death and instead of being sucked into a second life with their familiars as happens to ordinary skinchangers, they can create new bodies of snow and ice and cold. 

If so, then the six White Walkers who scragged Ser Waymar Royce and his men could easily find berths in the six pups delivered to the six Stark children.

Now, the thought that occurs from there, is that we're pretty familiar with those pups and with the possible exception of Shaggydog, they aint evil, which in turn suggests that if they did once tread lightly on the snow, those Walkers may not be as evil as we have been led to suppose.

Lets see what happens to Jon

[Black Crow]

And then a quick thought about the big scaly beasties of this thread...

In the previous post I emphasised how there were six white walkers, six direwolf pups and six children

Suppose the same is true on the other side?

Danaerys is given three eggs which obviously end up hatching into three dragons

In the House of the Undying she's given a vision of Rhaegar, who declares pretty heavily that there must be a third

Discussion of this scene has tended to concentrate on who the "third" might be, but looking at the direwolves there's another explanation. If the six direwolves were intended to bond with the six children of Winterfell, was Rhaegar referring to a bonding with the three dragons ?

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

If so, then the six White Walkers who scragged Ser Waymar Royce and his men could easily find berths in the six pups delivered to the six Stark children.

How would that happen? When they were in the womb as they were born far south of the Wall?  Also, when Bran first wargs the ravens with BR, he discovers the 'shadow of a soul' of the singer who warged into the bird.   If the  direwolves can carry the soul of a WW, Bran should have discovered another soul in Summer, but apparently, he did not.  If the WW's were in the direwolves, they should of been noticed by Bran, Jon, Arya and Rickon, but if they did, no one mentioned it.  WW's in direwolves does not seem to have happened, as far as I can tell.

[Matthew.]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

GRRM has been deliberately vague about the convergence of widely separated events, so the fact that the wolves turn up at the beginning of AGoT and the dragons at the end oughtn't to be regarded as significant in terms of timing or of cause and effect, other that both are engineered.

Generally I would agree, and I think GRRM even gives a warning at the beginning of AFFC or ADWD to that effect--that book order of POVs should not necessarily be taken as a chronological order of events.

However, with Dany's aGoT chapters, we do have at least a little bit of guidance as to the order of events. Robert orders her assassination after Eddard has been named Hand, but before she has hatched the dragons.

[Brad Stark]

Chronologically, I assume that the 6 new White Walkers in the prologue didn't exist until well after Jon's birth and maybe only a few days before Waymar's death.

We know the Watch was both much larger and much more important when Aegon invaded.  So I find it likely that the Others did not exist recently.  We also know the Stark's haven't had wolves in many generations.  Maybe this is all tied together, the last Stark Wolf, the last Other and the last Dragon all died at the same time.

Tying Gared to the wolves is interesting.  Gared obviously didn't have the wits to be acting on his own plan - either he panicked and ran to Winterfell, or he was told to go there and obeyed.  The wolves didn't choose to go to Winterfell either.  Either mommy wolf did or her warg did.  So did Gared lead the Starks to the Wolves by coincidence?  Or was mommy wolf following Gared?  Or was Gered following mommy wolf?  Was mommy wolf's death a coincidence?  A warg might choose to use mommy wolf to transport pups to the Starks, but what reason would they have to kill her after?

What scared Gerad so badly?  Reading aGoT, I assumed seeing a white walker was enough to freak him out - but Sam sees (and kills) one and is barely even shaken up.  I'd assume Sam would scare more easily.

[Black Crow]

I'd be wary of getting too hooked up on the White Walkers on this, or rather it may be a mistake to work on the basis that they were running the show, when in reality they may turn out to be the servants. 

I'm still very much of the opinion that there's a fairly fundamental misconception of their role in that while they're obviously dangerous individuals we've not so far seen any real evidence that they constitute an army

[alienarea]

12 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I'd be wary of getting too hooked up on the White Walkers on this, or rather it may be a mistake to work on the basis that they were running the show, when in reality they may turn out to be the servants. 

I'm still very much of the opinion that there's a fairly fundamental misconception of their role in that while they're obviously dangerous individuals we've not so far seen any real evidence that they constitute an army

The Great Other is a Wolf (-god). Fenrir.

[TheLastWolf]

54 minutes ago, alienarea said:

The Great Other is a Wolf (-god). Fenrir.

Too bad the hate alt bots don't venture to Heresy or rather anywhere outside their hate spout domain or they'd cream seeing this. New point to self righteously, absolutistly (Sith vibes) repeat for the next 5 years, regardless of whether we get TWoW or not.

EDIT

Not that they ever read the text, TWoW be damned

[Black Crow]

40 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Too bad the hate alt bots don't venture to Heresy or rather anywhere outside their hate spout domain or they'd cream seeing this. New point to self righteously, absolutistly (Sith vibes) repeat for the next 5 years, regardless of whether we get TWoW or not.

EDIT

Not that they ever read the text, TWoW be damned

We're Heretics because for years we've discussed what might really be going on, looking beyond the simplistic notion of a big bad up north and the world being saved by the return of Azor Ahai and the dragons.

Inevitably, as this leads to questioning certain orthodoxies, we've attracted a fair degree of hate over the years. We're used to it. 

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, alienarea said:

The Great Other is a Wolf (-god). Fenrir.

Really wouldn't surprise me. Whatever the precise detail of the story eventually turns out to be, the Starks are just as compromised as the Targaryens - but on the other side 

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

the Starks are just as compromised as the Targaryens

That really does sum it up.