Heresy 244 Big Scaly Beasties with Bad Breath

[LynnS]

On 9/7/2022 at 6:53 AM, asongofheresy said:

what if Young Griff is son of Rhaegar and Ashara? 

I'm not so sure about this one.  Especially since she was rumoured to have had a daughter, who died at birth.  And according to Cersei, a child that was stolen from her by Ned.  Of course, this is Cersei throwing things at the wall to get a reaction out of Ned; but there is still a rumour of a birth and a daughter.  The unreliable narrator is hard at work here and can we be sure the child is dead or hidden for some reason.   

[LynnS]

19 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 wonder if their appearance is a time and causality event and we haven't seen the cause yet.  This is GoT where GRRM is experimenting with this idea right from the beginning with Hodor and I dare say with Jon and Ghost.  

Jon finds Ghost by hearing him on a psychic plane and Ghost's eyes are open.  I think this was caused at the Skirling Pass and he hears Bran's silent shout, then Bran touches Ghost-Jon and tells him first he must open his eyes - his third eye and Ghost's eyes.  

Once again, Bran tells Jon that he didn't have three eyes before The Crow.   Jon's third eye was opened before Bran.   It's looking like one of those time loop things between Bran and Jon  

[LongRider]

ICE:

The story started with 6 WWs in the snow, Sam killed one, so now five.(?)

There were 5 Stark children born in the North, and one, Jon, born in the South for 6 Stark kids.  Robb is dead so now five.  Four Stark kids with unknown whereabouts, only Jon Snow's is known and his status of dead or alive unknown at present. 

Six direwolf pups found in the snow with a cold dead mother wolf, and two; Lady and Grey Wind dead, so now four.

FIRE;

Two Targs fled Westeros, one Viserys, who was crowned in molten gold is dead, and Daenerys is alive. 

Three dragons born of fire from stone eggs are living growing and flying.  

Various R'Hllr priests and priestess in the story.  In Westeros, Thoros and Mel both living.  Other priests of R'Hllr scattered around Planetos.

 

So, to me, it looks like the FIRE side has lost only Viserys who wasn't important anyway.

Off the wall question.  Are there four dragons?

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion V

"This was the most beautiful city on the river, and the richest," said Yandry. "Chroyane, the festival city."

Too rich, thought Tyrion, too beautiful. It is never wise to tempt the dragons. The drowned city was all around them. A half-seen shape flapped by overhead, pale leathery wings beating at the fog. The dwarf craned his head around to get a better look, but the thing was gone as suddenly as it had appeared

Just some random thoughts. 

[Nevets]

27 minutes ago, LongRider said:

ICE:

The story started with 6 WWs in the snow, Sam killed one, so now five.(?)

There were 5 Stark children born in the North, and one, Jon, born in the South for 6 Stark kids.  Robb is dead so now five.  Four Stark kids with unknown whereabouts, only Jon Snow's is known and his status of dead or alive unknown at present. 

Six direwolf pups found in the snow with a cold dead mother wolf, and two; Lady and Grey Wind dead, so now four.

FIRE;

Two Targs fled Westeros, one Viserys, who was crowned in molten gold is dead, and Daenerys is alive. 

Three dragons born of fire from stone eggs are living growing and flying.  

Various R'Hllr priests and priestess in the story.  In Westeros, Thoros and Mel both living.  Other priests of R'Hllr scattered around Planetos.

 

So, to me, it looks like the FIRE side has lost only Viserys who wasn't important anyway.

Off the wall question.  Are there four dragons?

Just some random thoughts. 

I am VERY skeptical of the idea that there are only 6 (now 5) White Walkers.  Mormont told Tyrion that WWs had been seen near Eastwatch.  That is a looong ways from where Royce was, which was over towards Craster's.  Also, something is scaring hell out of the wildlings.  I'm not suggesting an army's worth, but a bit more than one lousy band of six.  

As for the singleton Sam ran into, not sure of its significance.  It could simply be GRRM showing us Sam's bravery and that dragonglass kills White Walkers, or at least melts them.

I am also highly suspicious of any connection between the Starks and the Others.  From what we've seen, the Others seem antithetical to life, and the Starks are anything but.  If there is some sort of tie, it's nothing resembling an alliance.

It's possible that there was some sort of agreement prohibiting human settlement north of the Wall that has been long forgotten and something has caused the Others to finally act in response.  Just a brainstorm.

[Melifeather]

On 9/7/2022 at 5:53 AM, asongofheresy said:

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? 

IMO Young Griff is Rhaegar and Elia's son. Varys arranged for a baby swap before Rhaegar left for the Trident as a precautionary measure. The child dashed against the wall was but a poor Pisswater Prince. I suspect Septa Lenore is his grandmother, Rhaella. I still believe Jon Snow is Ned's Stark's son fathered on Ashara. *exhale* I sure do hope we get to find out when GRRM finally finishes his story. When he mentioned that he's finished the arc for one of his characters...it makes it sound like he's actually writing Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring.

[alienarea]

9 hours 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

I'm sorry, I don't get what you're saying.

[Black Crow]

8 minutes ago, Nevets said:

I am VERY skeptical of the idea that there are only 6 (now 5) White Walkers.  Mormont told Tyrion that WWs had been seen near Eastwatch.  That is a looong ways from where Royce was, which was over towards Craster's.  Also, something is scaring hell out of the wildlings.  I'm not suggesting an army's worth, but a bit more than one lousy band of six.  

As for the singleton Sam ran into, not sure of its significance.  It could simply be GRRM showing us Sam's bravery and that dragonglass kills White Walkers, or at least melts them.

 

As to the first, they are certainly a long way apart if they are expected to walk [no pun intended] but if riding the cold winds passing between the two locations could take no time at all.

As to the second, there is an obscure but very significant SSM explaining...

Posted 16 March 2015 - 04:47 PM

"In an interruption to our advertised program I'm watching a feature on Sky Atlantic, providing a catch up on the HBO series thus far and featuring interviews with [among others] GRRM, who has just confirmed that when Sam pinked Ser Puddles "he broke the spell holding him together." 

[LongRider]

My comments in purple.

1 hour ago, Nevets said:

I am VERY skeptical of the idea that there are only 6 (now 5) White Walkers.  (Me too, but their appearance in text show very few) Mormont told Tyrion that WWs had been seen near Eastwatch.  That is a looong ways from where Royce was, which was over towards Craster's.  Also, something is scaring hell out of the wildlings.  I'm not suggesting an army's worth, but a bit more than one lousy band of six.  

As for the singleton Sam ran into, not sure of its significance.  It could simply be GRRM showing us Sam's bravery and that dragonglass kills White Walkers, or at least melts them.

I am also highly suspicious of any connection between the Starks and the Others.  From what we've seen, the Others seem antithetical to life, and the Starks are anything but.  If there is some sort of tie, it's nothing resembling an alliance.  (Do the Others fit in a Stark shaped hole?  When I think of them in this way, I don't see it)

It's possible that there was some sort of agreement prohibiting human settlement north of the Wall that has been long forgotten and something has caused the Others to finally act in response.  Just a brainstorm.

 

[TheLastWolf]

9 hours ago, alienarea said:

I'm sorry, I don't get what you're saying.

Never mind, I was talking about the irrational hate mongers in the General forum

[Back in Black-Snow]

Somebody sees hate under every rock and behind every bush. Maybe they should stick to playing with Legos and coloring books.

[LynnS]

16 hours ago, Melifeather said:

IMO Young Griff is Rhaegar and Elia's son. Varys arranged for a baby swap before Rhaegar left for the Trident as a precautionary measure.

Hey Feather! Hope you had a great summer - nice to see you back!

I'm inclined to think Aegon is the real deal also.  I can't see Rhaegar or Varys not taking steps to secure Aegon's safety. Especially with Aerys descending into madness.  Cersei even suggests doing the same with Tommen - dying his hair and hiding him in some Lord's house as a squire.  Ned suggests she take her children and skeedaddle to Essos.  So I don't think this is off the table.

Tyrion doesn't actually say that Young Griff isn't Aegon; only that he isn't Connington's son.  Griff does have Rhaegar's eye colour.  I'm also not buying Illyrio's act; that he loves the boy like a son.  I think Connington believes Aegon is Rhaegar's son.  Same with Septa Lemore.

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Never mind, I was talking about the irrational hate mongers in the General forum

Don't spend any time on it.  

[Nevets]

16 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As to the first, they are certainly a long way apart if they are expected to walk [no pun intended] but if riding the cold winds passing between the two locations could take no time at all.

As to the second, there is an obscure but very significant SSM explaining...

Posted 16 March 2015 - 04:47 PM

"In an interruption to our advertised program I'm watching a feature on Sky Atlantic, providing a catch up on the HBO series thus far and featuring interviews with [among others] GRRM, who has just confirmed that when Sam pinked Ser Puddles "he broke the spell holding him together." 

I don't really think they are some sort of will-o'-the-wisps that can move about the Far North instantaneously and at will.  They are solid (if magical) beings with their own bodies.  How sentient they are and whether they have, for example, hive minds is still up for debate.

That dragonglass breaks a spell holding WWs together, causing them to turn to water, makes perfect sense to me.  Where the spell comes from, who knows?

 

[Brad Stark]

On 9/8/2022 at 4:38 PM, 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

We've seen with the dragons, one individual can be very destructive, you don't need an army.   If Sam didn't actually kill an Other, but just destroyed its temporary body, they might be very difficult to kill.  If they can raise and control the dead from a distance, one Other can take out an army of men who aren't prepared.  As long as each dead man kills on average 1 living man, the whole army dies and is under control of the Other.

[LynnS]

23 minutes ago, Nevets said:

I don't really think they are some sort of will-o'-the-wisps that can move about the Far North instantaneously and at will.  They are solid (if magical) beings with their own bodies.  How sentient they are and whether they have, for example, hive minds is still up for debate.

That dragonglass breaks a spell holding WWs together, causing them to turn to water, makes perfect sense to me.  Where the spell comes from, who knows?

 

This what we are told about them:

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Samwell V

Melisandre smiled. "Necromancy animates these wights, yet they are still only dead flesh. Steel and fire will serve for them. The ones you call the Others are something more."

"Demons made of snow and ice and cold," said Stannis Baratheon. "The ancient enemy. The only enemy that matters." He considered Sam again. "I am told that you and this wildling girl passed beneath the Wall, through some magic gate."

"The B-black Gate," Sam stammered. "Below the Nightfort."

 

So they are made with some kind of sorcery and they are more than reanimated bodies.  There is a spell that binds whatever they are (souls?) into a body made of snow and ice and cold.  Obsidian breaks the spell and they are returned to their incorporeal form.  I'm not sure they are actually Destroyed unless they are trapped in the stone.

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Samwell I

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."

 

The obsidian seems to break the spell by drawing out the cold.  The Other goes from solid form back to a fine white mist.  The mist is what Tormund refers to the white shadow with teeth.  You can fight the ice demons but not the white shadow.

So the assumption is that the Others can exist in two states; one of which is solid and the other is a mist carried on the wind. They are more than just reanimated corpses.  They seem to have separate consciousness from each other with power over the wights.

Varamyr's chapter also shows us that souls travel on the wind before settling into a form or second life.   Varamyr is more than your average Joe; he's a powerful skinchanger.  So the WWs may have this in common with Varamyr except that they can either create a body of ice and snow and cold or there is some other agency that does that for them.

In terms of their numbers, I don't know.  I suspect that failed greenseers make up their potential number:

Quote

 

A Game of Thrones - Bran III

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

 

This would have been Bran's fate had he fallen.  His soul would have been impaled by ice.  The Great Other is described as the soul of ice.  Basically, I think the souls of powerful greenseer candidates have been impaled on ice and this is the spell that allows them to construct a body of ice and snow and cold.

I'm not sure if they just float around on the wind otherwise, but they bring the killing cold with them or they are the killing cold in their non-solid state.  I also think it's possible that they temporarily lodge in soldier pines and sentinel trees.

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Samwell I

But that was wrong. They weren't alone at all.

The lower branches of the great green sentinel shed their burden of snow with a soft wet plop. Grenn spun, thrusting out his torch. "Who goes there?" A horse's head emerged from the darkness. Sam felt a moment's relief, until he saw the horse. Hoarfrost covered it like a sheen of frozen sweat, and a nest of stiff black entrails dragged from its open belly. On its back was a rider pale as ice. Sam made a whimpery sound deep in his throat. He was so scared he might have pissed himself all over again, but the cold was in him, a cold so savage that his bladder felt frozen solid. The Other slid gracefully from the saddle to stand upon the snow. Sword-slim it was, and milky white. Its armor rippled and shifted as it moved, and its feet did not break the crust of the new-fallen snow.

 

These are the assumptions we are talking about with a few of my own added.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

We've seen with the dragons, one individual can be very destructive, you don't need an army.   If Sam didn't actually kill an Other, but just destroyed its temporary body, they might be very difficult to kill.  If they can raise and control the dead from a distance, one Other can take out an army of men who aren't prepared.  As long as each dead man kills on average 1 living man, the whole army dies and is under control of the Other.

There's no doubt at all that White Walkers are dangerous with a capital D. My point is that they aint an army waiting to invade Westeros. They aint the Dothraki and so the nature of the threat is very different

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

We've seen with the dragons, one individual can be very destructive, you don't need an army.   If Sam didn't actually kill an Other, but just destroyed its temporary body, they might be very difficult to kill.  If they can raise and control the dead from a distance, one Other can take out an army of men who aren't prepared.  As long as each dead man kills on average 1 living man, the whole army dies and is under control of the Other.

Yes, the Others themselves don't need to be numerous to pose a tremendous threat.

Depending on what the range is on the ice horde's wight raising ability, they have a whole potential army of the dead awaiting them if they ever breach the Wall, thanks to the civil war.

The other factor in their favor is the (presumably) long winter, and all of the freezing and starvation that will entail; the Others don't need numbers, they only need patience.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

This what we are told about them:

So they are made with some kind of sorcery and they are more than reanimated bodies.  There is a spell that binds whatever they are (souls?) into a body made of snow and ice and cold.  Obsidian breaks the spell and they are returned to their incorporeal form.  I'm not sure they are actually Destroyed unless they are trapped in the stone.

The obsidian seems to break the spell by drawing out the cold.  The Other goes from solid form back to a fine white mist.  The mist is what Tormund refers to the white shadow with teeth.  You can fight the ice demons but not the white shadow.

So the assumption is that the Others can exist in two states; one of which is solid and the other is a mist carried on the wind. They are more than just reanimated corpses.  They seem to have separate consciousness from each other with power over the wights.

Varamyr's chapter also shows us that souls travel on the wind before settling into a form or second life.   Varamyr is more than your average Joe; he's a powerful skinchanger.  So the WWs may have this in common with Varamyr except that they can either create a body of ice and snow and cold or there is some other agency that does that for them.

In terms of their numbers, I don't know.  I suspect that failed greenseers make up their potential number:

This would have been Bran's fate had he fallen.  His soul would have been impaled by ice.  The Great Other is described as the soul of ice.  Basically, I think the souls of powerful greenseer candidates have been impaled on ice and this is the spell that allows them to construct a body of ice and snow and cold.

I'm not sure if they just float around on the wind otherwise, but they bring the killing cold with them or they are the killing cold in their non-solid state.  I also think it's possible that they temporarily lodge in soldier pines and sentinel trees.

These are the assumptions we are talking about with a few of my own added.

Nice summary and all that I'd add at this point is that while Varamyr  and his prologue are incredibly useful/important in this interpretation, he's only a skinchanger and has no connection to direwolves. GRRM has been very close-lipped about the difference between skinchangers and wargs and I strongly suspect that we'll discover that its wargs [like Jon] who can still remain free - unlike Varamyr who finishes up being trapped in One Eye. In other words the get out of jail free card when Jon goes to Ghost

[LongRider]

3 hours ago, Nevets said:

Where the spell comes from, who knows?

The heart of winter?  The question of who makes the spell might be rather important. 

Quote

 Brad Stark said,    If they can raise and control the dead from a distance,

Do the WW do that though?  Has it been proven that the WW's create or control the wights?

 

 

 

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

The heart of winter?  The question of who makes the spell might be rather important. 

Do the WW do that though?  Has it been proven that the WW's create or control the wights?

The conclusion we reached after a lot of discussion was that the raising of the wights wasn't down to individual white walkers but to the cold. Exactly how this might actually work has yet to be established but probably the easiest way to visualise it is a cold mist flowing over the land and raising every dead thing that it touches.

The white walkers on the other hand I believe are wargs who can create their own temporary bodies of snow and ice - and perhaps the same cold that raises the wights. It may turn out to be significant of course that those seen in the AGoT prologue look like Starks