Dreamsongs Revisited: Shades of Grey in "Sandkings"

[Phylum of Alexandria]

I've been re-examining GRRM's short stories to see what seems similar and different from ASOIAF thus far.

The temptation when reading GRRM's other works is to assume that similar details or plots in the older stories will help predict what happens in ASOIAF, but we tend not to mention what is not carried over into ASOIAF, at least so far.

This post is about peculiarities of sex, gender, and reproduction.

If you haven’t read Dreamsongs, be warned: Spoilers below!

************

 

Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in “Sandkings”

Simon Cress, a wealthy sociopath, stumbles into a Little Shop of Horrors in search of a new pet to entertain him and his friends. The shop is Wo & Shade Importers, and inside he meets a mysterious woman named Jala Wo, one of the owners. It seems that the other owner, Shade, does not see customers. Once Jala gets a sense of Simon Cress’ personality, she suggests a particular type of species, one that would not just wage wars against one another, but would also worship him. She calls the creatures “sandkings,” which makes them sound male, but soon describes them thusly:

"They share hive minds," Wo said. "Castle minds, in this case. There are only three organisms in the tank, actually. The fourth died. You see how her castle has fallen."

"The maw lives in the castle. Maw is my name for her—a pun, if you will. The thing is mother and stomach both. Female, large as your fist, immobile. Actually, sandking is a bit of a misnomer. The mobiles are peasants and warriors. The real ruler is a queen. But that analogy is faulty as well. Considered as a whole, each castle is a single hermaphroditic creature."

So, within a few paragraphs of dialogue, we get a rather complicated conception of the creature’s sex, one in which female and male descriptors and analogies are used, qualified, and used again anyway.

We learn that the mobiles of each castle-mind eventually go through several stages of metamorphosis, with the morphology determined by each individual maw. Later on, we also learn something interesting about Shade, the shop’s co-owner.

"What matters is the metamorphosis your sandkings are now undergoing. As the maw grows, you see, it gets progressively more intelligent. Its psionic powers strengthen, and its mind becomes more sophisticated, more ambitious. The armored mobiles are useful enough when the maw is tiny and only semi-sentient, but now it needs better servants, bodies with more capabilities. Do you understand? The mobiles are all going to give birth to a new breed of sandking. I can't say exactly what it will look like. Each maw designs its own, to fit its perceived needs and desires. But it will be biped, with four arms and opposable thumbs. It will be able to construct and operate advanced machinery. The individual sandkings will not be sentient. But the maw will be very sentient indeed."

Kress was gaping at Wo's image on the viewscreen. "Your workers," he said, with an effort. "The ones who came out here . . . who installed the tank . . ."

Wo managed a faint smile. "Shade," she said.

"Shade is a sandking," Kress repeated numbly. "And you sold me a tank of . . . of . . . infants, ah . . ."

"Do not be absurd," Wo said. "A first-stage sandking is more like a sperm than like an infant. The wars temper and control them in nature. Only one in a hundred reaches the second stage. Only one in a thousand achieves the third and final plateau and becomes like Shade. Adult sandkings are not sentimental about the small maws. There are too many of them, and their mobiles are pests.”

So a lot of interesting revelations here, and plenty of questions that remain unanswered. First, while it seems that the mobiles of each castle-mind, with “mobiles” sometimes switched for “sandkings,” are usually described as male, the nature of the castle-mind’s reproduction is far from clear.

The early developing sandkings are described as “more like a sperm than like an infant,” but principally in terms of its viability and importance to the parents. Meanwhile, the changing morphology of the mobiles is described as metamorphosis, but also described as the mobiles giving birth to a new breed of sandking. And nowhere here is it made clear how the Maw factors into sexual reproduction. Is there a self-pollination that takes place? Or are all of the sex and gender labels mere rhetorical conveniences?

Not to mention, there is the issue of Shade. Shade is described as male, and as a sandking, an adult mobile. But how is that distinguished from the Maw?

“The individual sandkings will not be sentient. But the maw will be very sentient indeed.”

It’s probably the case that “Shade” is really the full hermaphroditic castle hive mind, not just a male mobile. The usage of “sandking” to mean by turns the mobiles and the full castle mind is confusing indeed, as is the dubious labeling of Shade’s gender as male.

Shade as a castle-whole may be hermaphroditic, but Shade’s mind is centered in the Maw, and thus Shade as an agent and rational actor should perhaps be described as female. Why does Jala Wo describe her partner as a he? Perhaps this is simply her attempt to play to Cress’ lazy patriarchal expectations as she sells him Shade’s dangerous brood, but it’s not clear.

There’s also the nature of worship: the sandkings pay tribute to their caretakers by carving idols of their likeness in the sand. The narcissistic Cress likes to think of himself as a god, and embraces this role with all the fervor and jealousy of the Old Testament scriptures. In doing so, Cress in fact plays the role of the bamboozled caretaker of the parasitic cuckoo sandkings.

How this all might relate to ASOIAF is not clear, maybe it won’t at all!

Part of me thinks that some of the symbolic language pointed to the weirwoods being female giants and the “antler men/Garth” types being like male mobiles. For instance, there’s the trebuchets The Three Whores, and the Six Sisters, both of which hurl bodies as well as boulders. The Three Whores hurled “antler men,” while giants were said to pelt Garth Greenhand with boulders in a larger passage about the sowing of seeds. Could it be that the weirwoods are immobile giant queens and their walkers are their queensguard? Are the white walkers just mobiles for their own Maw-thing in the Heart of Winter? Certainly Sandkings made me think of this possibility (as did LmL's observation of literary links between the Others and the kingsguard, and the Others and Weirwoods), but see my recent post about greenseeing as a major qualification to this idea. Even if there are similarities, we probably shouldn't expect a sentient psionic presence like the Sandking maws. The weirwoods seem effectively mindless, but possibly with indirect psionic inducements that serve its own biological interests. But I digress.

Even if the female giants/walkers stuff is off, there is all of the stuff in ASOIAF about cuckolds, baby-snatching, animal-hybrids, human incest to retain magical traits, dragons switching sex, and Jon Snow, the genetic song of ice and fire.  So peculiarities of sex and reproduction are certainly something to look out for going forward.

Some of those seeds may indeed bear some fruit in the deeper magical plot. But given the wild ambiguity of sex and gender in Sandkings, most of which remains unresolved (possibly “unknowable” by humans, given the alien nature of the species), I will say I am a bit humbled.

Given how mysterious he can remain even in his “science fiction horror” writing, I think there’s a big chance that GRRM will double down even more with such ambiguities and unknowns when we discover more about magic in his “fantasy” story. We’ll learn more, for sure, but we may face limits to our feeble comprehension (i.e., GRRM the god will keep us in the dark).

Or lost in the dark, murky, uncategorized grey…

[sweetsunray]

I published an essay this week on Sandkings and how this relates to the concept of aSoIaF's "nightqueens", and that it is the fundamental concept behind the entity at the Heart of Winter and the Others her "mobiles"

https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com/2022/10/15/from-sandkings-to-nightqueens/

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I published an essay this week on Sandkings and how this relates to the concept of aSoIaF's "nightqueens", and that it is the fundamental concept behind the entity at the Heart of Winter and the Others her "mobiles"

https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com/2022/10/15/from-sandkings-to-nightqueens/

Interesting, I'll have to take a look!

This post and my last one is me backpedaling a little bit away from my stronger stance of a Sandkings structure to the magical plot, so I'm certainly interesting in evidence that might sway me back!

[sweetsunray]

I would add to your OP that Shade is referred to as Sandking because that is the overall species' name. Even a maw is still Sandking as species. Sandkings does not just mean mobiles. It is however an ironic name for the species (maw & mobiles) as the maw is basically the mind and regarded as feminine with autogamy ability reproduction. It would be more apt to refer to the species as Sandqueens imo.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

10 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I would add to your OP that Shade is referred to as Sandking because that is the overall species' name. Even a maw is still Sandking as species. Sandkings does not just mean mobiles. It is however an ironic name for the species (maw & mobiles) as the maw is basically the mind and regarded as feminine with autogamy ability reproduction. It would be more apt to refer to the species as Sandqueens imo.

I think that's mostly true, but at least once and maybe more, sandking is used to indicate mobiles:

“The individual sandkings will not be sentient. But the maw will be very sentient indeed.”

Maybe a mistake on GRRM's part, maybe it's Jala playing to her mark, but it certainly helps to establish a sense of the uncanny and uncategorizable with respect to the nature of the sandkings.

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I think that's mostly true, but at least once and maybe more, sandking is used to indicate mobiles:

“The individual sandkings will not be sentient. But the maw will be very sentient indeed.”

Maybe a mistake on GRRM's part, maybe it's Jala playing to her mark, but it certainly helps to establish a sense of the uncanny and uncategorizable with respect to the nature of the sandkings.

Wo also admits that the term "maw" is her own invention, a type of inside joke.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Wo also admits that the term "maw" is her own invention, a type of inside joke.

I wonder if the whole maw thing is a bit of an inside meta-genre pun for GRRM. The shop of dangerous curiosities, instead of having a cursed monkey's paw with a mind of its own, here has a "maw" that gets the best of the customer.

[sweetsunray]

26 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I wonder if the whole maw thing is a bit of an inside meta-genre pun for GRRM. The shop of dangerous curiosities, instead of having a cursed monkey's paw with a mind of its own, here has a "maw" that gets the best of the customer.

Maw sounds like southern accent "ma". A mom with sharp teeth.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

I published an essay this week on Sandkings and how this relates to the concept of aSoIaF's "nightqueens", and that it is the fundamental concept behind the entity at the Heart of Winter and the Others her "mobiles"

https://sweeticeandfiresunray.com/2022/10/15/from-sandkings-to-nightqueens/

I read your essay. There's lots of great stuff there. I especially love the observation about Varys and his little birds resembling a spidery maw giving orders to the Others. Fantastic.

I don't know how deep the Sandkings similarity will run in ASOIAF, and how much will be tweaked, or combined with ideas from other stories. Certainly we see similarities to other stories. The "she sees me" part in Varamyr's prologue could have been taken right out of Nightflyers, with respect to the cold mind of Royd's mother seeing through the corpses she uses as killers. The Hrangan minds' use of slave races, some of whom themselves control other races, seems like a relevant connection to the Heart of Winter, the Others, and the dead they control. 

Yet this seems different from the weirwoods, which are more like the volcryn, the Nightflyer ship, the Greeshka, the Greywater Station mold, and the Jaenshi pyramids all in one. For the most part mindless, but having an important influence on the thoughts and actions of other beings nevertheless.

And the Shade tree and the Undying resemble the greenseers, yet have cold Otherish qualities as well. I think it's significant that the heart of the Undying, the Shade tree's heart, is corrupted; close to death, but still alive. Maybe that will relate to something like the crazed white maw, or something else, but the changed state seems like it will prove to be important to the deeper magical plot.

For my part, my working idea is that GRRM is pushing the idea of three magical bloodlines, perhaps based on three magical maws and their guardians. It was initially inspired by LML's analysis linking Others with the kingsguard as well as with weirwoods. And also an attempt to understand the recurring three-color pattern that GRRM peppers throughout the story. The sigil of House Massey, the forks of the Trident, the terrain colors in cyvasse, the colors of the Tully muppets: all blue, green, and red. At first thought it seems to correspond to the three magical systems of the story, but not only is that so self-evident as to not require hints, the magics in fact have a lot of overlap. After reading Sandkings, and upon reading about Garth Greenhand planting three weirwoods that resembled one giant tree, I came to the possibility of 3 warring super-organisms, with hearts of the same species, but adapted to different terrains and needs.

Still, I don't quite know how the fire/dragon side fits into this schema. And the psionic properties of the Weirwoods and Shade trees seem to be distinct from those of the Heart of Winter. Maybe it's just a perceived difference that GRRM currently enforces via limited perspective, and they will converge in later installments. But as it is, my hypothesis is certainly not air tight.

Thanks for the food for thought!

PS: Speaking of food, normal babies might die in the proximity of the Others with their choking cold, or in the Heart of Winter. But babies of a certain icy stock might be able to be taken up alive and well for consumption, blood parasitism, or whatever it is the Winter maw might do. Aerea Targaryen certainly demonstrated something similar on the fire blood side...

 

[sweetsunray]

46 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I read your essay. There's lots of great stuff there. I especially love the observation about Varys and his little birds resembling a spidery maw giving orders to the Others. Fantastic.

I had read an essay from Alexis-rose-something (that I linked to) on Varys as a character - in how truthful he is. She compared the murder of Pycelle and the stabbing by the little birds as Varys mirroring the murder of Aegon/Pisswater Prince and little Rhaenys, which I agree with, but as I was writing on this essay simultaenously (which was already majorly drafted), and I mentioned my prior essay on Varys and his tie to "spiders" (back then in order to figure out hints for his potential origin), I suddenly realized I could flip the thinking and regard him as a stand-in spider-maw. And of course as I was rereading details on the little birds, I ended up rereading the end of the epilogue again, and it hit me that this scene is a mirror of aGoT's prologue and the slaying of Waymar Royce. Couldn't believe it myself how strongly these scenes mirror each other. For me those scenes mirroring one another confirms an ice spider maw being at the hivemind helm of the Others.

It's imo a must read for anyone speculating on the Others - read the last three paragprahs of Kevan's murder and then read the scene when the Others kill Waymar Royce. And in a sense Varys as a eunuch works for a hermaphroditic maw concept.

46 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't know how deep the Sandkings similarity will run in ASOIAF, and how much will be tweaked, or combined with ideas from other stories. Certainly we see similarities to other stories. The "she sees me" part in Varamyr's prologue could have been taken right out of Nightflyers, with respect to the cold mind of Royd's mother seeing through the corpses she uses as killers. The Hrangan minds' use of slave races, some of whom themselves control other races, seems like a relevant connection to the Heart of Winter, the Others, and the dead they control. 

Agreed. The telepathic hostile (female) power is a recurring concept throughout so many of his stories.

46 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

And the Shade tree and the Undying resemble the greenseers, yet have cold Otherish qualities as well. I think it's significant that the heart of the Undying, the Shade tree's heart, is corrupted; close to death, but still alive. Maybe that will relate to something like the crazed white maw, or something else, but the changed state seems like it will prove to be important to the deeper magical plot.

The heart in the House of the Undying is a human heart, corrupted, but a human heart in origin. But the "thing" controlling the Undying and the heart is not a tree thing imo. It's a spider maw who was strong enough to supercede her own former bodily constraints and infuses the drink (her blood). And I believe she is still operating.

A much speculated figure in the Forsaken is the shadow sorceress woman next to Euron that Damphair sees. Some think it might be Quaithe, or Dany or Cersei. I think it's Shade, the maw who was once known as the spider goddess of Lyber. And imo she has two goals - create a new House of the Undying, with priests and warlocks, etc to be her new Undying Ones to host her, and to recapture Dany to destroy her once and for all (her eternal serpent/dragon enemy). Euron is just a tool to Shade. And her visions for him on the IT, etc are deceptive. When we see him on the IT with a head like a kraken with tentacles, I see a hivemind metaphor, and the one who's actually performing the magic is the shadow woman by his side (hence the white light). I think he'll eventually end up as a floating heart. But ultimately she's a rival of the ice spider maw in the North, because she decided to move into Westerosi territory.

Shade also deceived the warlocks, motivating them to go after Dany, while they believed she was going to Pentos, while she knew they'd encounter Euron who is such a great target for her to deceive. He believes himself to be this mastermind ruthless villain who manipulates and deceives everyone else, never even considering his source of his visions is using him for her own ends. And because she has seen in Dany's future that Euron's path would cross with Dany's at some point. The warlocks were the ones who took the dragon horn with them according to GRRM's app on asoiaf, and imo also the Valyrian steel armor. She wanted those tools to end up in Euron's possession, so he could capture Dany without being harmed.

46 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

For my part, my working idea is that GRRM is pushing the idea of three magical bloodlines, perhaps based on three magical maws and their guardians. It was initially inspired by LML's analysis linking Others with the kingsguard as well as with weirwoods. And also an attempt to understand the recurring three-color pattern that GRRM peppers throughout the story. The sigil of House Massey, the forks of the Trident, the terrain colors in cyvasse, the colors of the Tully muppets: all blue, green, and red. At first thought it seems to correspond to the three magical systems of the story, but not only is that so self-evident as to not require hints, the magics in fact have a lot of overlap. After reading Sandkings, and upon reading about Garth Greenhand planting three weirwoods that resembled one giant tree, I came to the possibility of 3 warring super-organisms, with hearts of the same species, but adapted to different terrains and needs.

I connect the three color schemes to three major factions. Two of the three are eternal enemies, for whom humans, animals and nature are enslavable tools to win their eternal war (silver/white-blue versus black-red, ice versus fire, spider maw versus serpent/dragon/worm demon). The third faction, green, nature is the sole power operating in defense of humanity and nature. But the green can lean towards icy or towards fire (wildire; green fire) to oppose any threat posed by either ice blue or red-black fire.

46 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Still, I don't quite know how the fire/dragon side fits into this schema.

Reread Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark, check out the mention of Saagael in Fire & Blood (he's worshipped in Lys and one of the gods Lara Rogare worshipped at KL, at a time dragons were in decline). Then reread Dany's dragon dreams in aGoT and consider Saagael communicating via the Darkling Plain to Dany, in order to be brought back into the world with a fire and blood sacrifice. Compare Drogo's state with that of Jasper, and read Dany's third dream inside the tent while delivering Rhaego.

Also reread Aegon the Conquerer's attempts in avenging his wife's supposed death in Dorne, specifically the story of Aegon attacking Ghost Hill and the fool in green-gold motley of House Toland with black-red Balerion. It's teh re-enactment of Saagael versus Dr. Weird.

Here's my working concept on Balerion/Drogon/Saagael:

While most dragons are just the magical firepower made flesh with animalistic intelligence, I believed the black-red ones are Saagael's hosts. And he loves war, destruction and dominion, always seeking a rider to aid him in that, sending them manipulative dreams. He dislikes his riders having children though - humans tend to choose the survival of their children over war and destruction, as Aegon I did (though his sons imo were not his). Maegor was a dream come true for such a one as Saagael, except that he died and lost the plot by pursuing having an heir. Then Targs started to gift eggs in the cribs of their kids, and Balerion was left without a rider. Then Farman stole the clutch of eggs containing the necessary black-red egg to host Saagael in another life, and he desperately tricked Aerea into becoming his rider and took off to Old Valyria to speed-heat her ovaries to try and make and hatch a new black-red egg. That last ditch experiment at the old mortal age was a complete disaster and it was too late when Viserys picked him to ride. Ever since Saagael was bound to the Darklin Plain, until finally Dany would end up with Farman's stolen eggs in her lap.

[Sandy Clegg]

16 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

The Three Whores hurled “antler men,” while giants were said to pelt Garth Greenhand with boulders in a larger passage about the sowing of seeds.

Whenever I see references to antlers (be it Baratheon stags or otherwise) I am reminded of their symbolic similarity to lightning, i.e. their shape. The Baratheon seat being at Storm's End and the antlers being their motif are no coincidence. So when I read about the Three Whores casting antler men into the air, I see a connection to elemental forces at work, with the Three Whores representing some kind of "lightning gods" or other sky creatures. E.g. the Thunderbird in Native American mythology. 

What this has to with whores, more research might need to be done. But we already know that whore is a homophone of "hoar" - a word GRRM has used in the past with reference to the cold, as in "hoarfrost". In fact, I often substitute the former for the latter when looking for symbolism, 'whores' being so prevalent in the series. And what is more 'hoary' than an Other?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 hour ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Whenever I see references to antlers (be it Baratheon stags or otherwise) I am reminded of their symbolic similarity to lightning, i.e. their shape.

That's interesting. As punny as GRRM is with wordplay, perhaps he did think of such a visual interplay. The visual interplay that I tend to think of is less creative, but is found in some real world mythic depictions of dryads and green men: antlers as tree branches.

Both Garth Greenhand and the Green Men of the Isle of Faces are mentioned as possibly having green skin and antlers. In addition, Garth's hands are conflated with his hair in TWOIAF, not unlike how weirwood tree leaves look like hands. Garth himself may be a symbolic conflation of various magical phenomena in early history, but I think the Green Men are literally walking tree warriors. The green walkers of the weirwoods.

"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." -- The Wayward Bride, ADWD

LML highlighted this passage as possibly talking about the origin of the Others. Perhaps he's right, perhaps not, but at face value, it seems most relevant for the Green Men, who have been explicitly tied to guarding an isle of sacred supernatural trees.

As such, I tend to think of a lot of mythic "storm god" references as relating to the Hammer of the Waters--certainly that's seeded in the Ironborn's hatred of the storm god (which happens to have plenty of tree references, and some green man symbolism in House Goodbrother). But obviously the Baratheons themselves have a connection to Storm's End, and so lightning may be flashing in their antlers as well.

[Sandy Clegg]

21 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

the Baratheons themselves have a connection to Storm's End

Storms End … or maybe Storm Send? I think the fog of history may have warped the name of this location. Storm lords making the storm, seems more a logical way to read it rather than where the storm ends. Baratheons and hammers are also strongly linked, so maybe the hammer of the waters was some kind of massive magical lightning surge?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

5 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Storms End … or maybe Storm Send? I think the fog of history may have warped the name of this location. Storm lords making the storm, seems more a logical way to read it rather than where the storm ends. Baratheons and hammers are also strongly linked, so maybe the hammer of the waters was some kind of massive magical lightning surge?

It's possible lightning was involved, though to me "hammer" suggests something weightier coming down and smashing, and causing rising floods.

Wedded as I am to Moon Meteor theory, my thoughts go to the giant female trebuchets launching boulders as well as bodies. Maybe the launching of bodies is more of a "ride the greenseer train" kind of metaphor rather than anything mechanical, but the launching of boulders seems perhaps related to astral bodies or other projectiles. GRRM often conflates telepathy with telekinesis; to him it's all "psy." So perhaps the giant trees are used to launch minds as well as bring in astral bodies. I had the thought that the use of "Whores" was to accentuate the sexual nature of the symbolism, so perhaps they launch giant seed pods that are mistaken for meteors.

 

[Sandy Clegg]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

It's possible lightning was involved, though to me "hammer" suggests something weightier coming down and smashing, and causing rising floods.

Wedded as I am to Moon Meteor theory, my thoughts go to the giant female trebuchets launching boulders as well as bodies. Maybe the launching of bodies is more of a "ride the greenseer train" kind of metaphor rather than anything mechanical, but the launching of boulders seems perhaps related to astral bodies or other projectiles. GRRM often conflates telepathy with telekinesis; to him it's all "psy." So perhaps the giant trees are used to launch minds as well as bring in astral bodies. I had the thought that the use of "Whores" was to accentuate the sexual nature of the symbolism, so perhaps they launch giant seed pods that are mistaken for meteors.

 

Boulders/ meteors, antlers/lightning. Yes it’s all very suggestive of grand powers calling elements from above in some combination. I think we have to see the green men/weirwood network as at least one of these elemental forces. But are they alone in this power, and if not what is their corresponding antagonistic force?

[Sandy Clegg]

7 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

perhaps the giant trees are used to launch minds

I really like this concept, with Bran as somehow being the ‘pilot’ or ‘gunner’ of such a power. But launching them in what sense - through space or through time? And which minds are candidates to be launched? We know of only a few characters with warg/mind travelling powers and they are pretty much all Starks …

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Boulders/ meteors, antlers/lightning. Yes it’s all very suggestive of grand powers calling elements from above in some combination. I think we have to see the green men/weirwood network as at least one of these elemental forces. But are they alone in this power, and if not what is their corresponding antagonistic force?

Well, we have two stories of sacred stones coming down from the sky: one white, from which Dawn was forged, and one black, worshipped by the Bloodstone Emperor. Garth Greenhand has a lot of similarities to The God-on-Earth from the GEotD origin myth, and he rode around on a pearl palanquin carried by his many wives, and later returned to the heavens. And all around TWOIAF there are stories of people summoning walls of water, or flooding areas. 

All of that could just be the weirwood and Shade tree magic systems being used by various followers across region and time. But we also know that dragons and perhaps fire wyrms can be summoned by sorcerous horns and fire-blood, and that at least some people (though I'm guessing most of the ancient Kings of Winter) worshipped the Others as gods and served them, and probably enjoyed ice manipulation magic through ice-blood.

Now, it could be that these simply are different supernatural forces, and there is certainly plenty of evidence to support that. But I have a feeling that GRRM is heading toward a revelation of common origin, a bit of reductionism in Planetos' magical system, which is one reason why I'm drawn to the "trichromatic theory of magical bloodlines." But I fully admit I could be wrong there, and the Three Singers are indeed singing three very different songs.

15 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I really like this concept, with Bran as somehow being the ‘pilot’ or ‘gunner’ of such a power. But launching them in what sense - through space or through time? And which minds are candidates to be launched? We know of only a few characters with warg/mind travelling powers and they are pretty much all Starks …

From the perspective of a weirwood, it probably doesn't care what mind it launches, so long as the body of said mind provides some nutrients for the tree to suck up (very much like the Greeshka in A Song for Lya). Throughout most of history, perhaps it was the CotF who piloted this psychic ship, then any of the First Men who somehow acquired magical blood, through interbreeding with CotF, or some other process hinted by the Garth legends.

But if it is true that the trebuchets launching boulders is a sexual reproductive metaphor, then the launching of antler men could have that meaning as well: new Garth organisms are launched via the female giants--not unlike the sandking maw creating new mobiles.

[Springwatch]

More ideas than I can reasonably handle here - but the angle I'm most attracted to is that the sandking home is described as a castle, and the first stage of sandking development is warfare. This feeds very nicely into those crazy magic castles of asoiaf - built by human hands probably, even with magic possibly, but not to a design that any rational human being would choose. I love the idea of a psionic organism guiding the subconscious of the human mobiles to make its crazy visions real (what the king dreams, the hand builds etc). And of course, the heart tree in almost every castle, fits the pattern very well.

@By Odin's Beard wrote some good stuff on castles here.

I'd like to learn something about asoiaf gods from the 'Sandkings' story, but it's not easy. The maw has the godlike powers over the mobiles, eventually over the human owner Cress too. But at the beginning, Cress appears to be 'god' to the sandkings, and his influence is written in their architecture. Somewhere here should be the answer to the puzzle of whether a heart tree resembles the ruling family or the other way about. They grow together most likely, I suppose.

ETA

I also wonder if the lady of the castle is in some sense in harmony with the maw. iirc Ned says to Arya she will marry a lord and rule his castle - so castles are ruled by females. And it's very noticeable that castle queens/ladies provide the feasts for the masses (like the maws!); it's described in great detail. Proto queens feel it too - 'I had no food to give' wails Sansa faced with the starving mob/emotionally starved Tyrion.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

On 1/8/2023 at 12:25 PM, Springwatch said:

More ideas than I can reasonably handle here - but the angle I'm most attracted to is that the sandking home is described as a castle, and the first stage of sandking development is warfare. This feeds very nicely into those crazy magic castles of asoiaf - built by human hands probably, even with magic possibly, but not to a design that any rational human being would choose. I love the idea of a psionic organism guiding the subconscious of the human mobiles to make its crazy visions real (what the king dreams, the hand builds etc). And of course, the heart tree in almost every castle, fits the pattern very well.

@By Odin's Beard wrote some good stuff on castles here.

I'd like to learn something about asoiaf gods from the 'Sandkings' story, but it's not easy. The maw has the godlike powers over the mobiles, eventually over the human owner Cress too. But at the beginning, Cress appears to be 'god' to the sandkings, and his influence is written in their architecture. Somewhere here should be the answer to the puzzle of whether a heart tree resembles the ruling family or the other way about. They grow together most likely, I suppose.

ETA

I also wonder if the lady of the castle is in some sense in harmony with the maw. iirc Ned says to Arya she will marry a lord and rule his castle - so castles are ruled by females. And it's very noticeable that castle queens/ladies provide the feasts for the masses (like the maws!); it's described in great detail. Proto queens feel it too - 'I had no food to give' wails Sansa faced with the starving mob/emotionally starved Tyrion.

Thanks! That thread by Odin's Beard sure is suggestive. The line about Winterfell as some monstrous stone tree, makes me think especially about the corrupted Shade trees, but obviously it ties castles to "monstrous" trees more generally.

As it relates to Castles, I think the maw of Sandkings may be mixed together with the pyramids from And Seven Times Never Kill Man, in one important respect: the people of Planetos war with one another, with the occupants of one castle or other structure changing up. And at least in some instances, we see newer occupants taking up the behaviors of the previous occupants, not unlike what we see with the Steel Angels and the Jaenshi in ASTNKM.

This is from the section of TWOIAF on Lorath. First, there was a mysterious ancient race of mazemakers, who were eventually wiped out by other peoples:

“In ancient days, the isles were home to the mysterious race of men known as the mazemakers, who vanished long before the dawn of true history, leaving no trace of themselves save for their bones and the mazes they built.

Others followed the mazemakers on Lorath in the centuries that followed. For a time the isles were home to a small, dark, hairy people, akin to the men of Ib. Fisherfolk, they lived along the coasts and shunned the great mazes of their predecessors. They in turn were displaced by Andals, pushing north from Andalos to the shores of Lorath Bay and across the bay in longships. Clad in mail and wielding iron swords and axes, the Andals swept across the islands, slaughtering the hairy men in the name of their seven-faced god and taking their women and children as slaves.”

Then there are the underground mazes themselves:

“Sprawling constructs of bewildering complexity, made from blocks of hewn stone, the mazemakers' constructions are scattered across the isles—and one, badly overgrown and sunk deep into the earth, has been found on Essos proper, on the peninsula south of Lorath. Lorassyon, the second largest of the Lorath isles, is home to a vast maze that fills more than three quarters of the surface area of the island and includes four levels beneath the ground, with some passages descending five hundred feet.

Scholars still debate the purpose of these mazes. Were they fortifications, temples, towns? Or did they serve some other, stranger purpose? The mazemakers left no written records, so we shall never know. Their bones tell us that they were massively built and larger than men, though not so large as giants. Some have suggested that mayhaps the mazemakers were born of interbreeding between human men and giant women. We do not known why they disappeared, though Lorathi legend suggests they were destroyed by an enemy from the sea: merlings in some versions of the tale, selkies and walrus-men in others.”

Then Valyrians came to Lorath after other peoples were wiped out, and they did not shun the mazes, In fact, they started to resume the earlier religion of the mazes, trying to open their third eye, equating man and beast, and espousing a philosophy of harmony:

"When men at last returned to the isles to live, they were men from Valyria itself. Thirteen hundred and twenty-two years before the Doom, a sect of religious dissidents left the Freehold to establish a temple upon Lorath's main isle.

These new Lorathi were worshippers of Boash, the Blind God. Rejecting all other deities, the followers of Boash ate no flesh, drank no wine, and walked barefoot through the world, clad only in hair shirts and hides. Their eunuch priests wore eyeless hoods in honor of their god; only in darkness, they believed, would their third eye open, allowing them to see the "higher truths" of creation that lay concealed behind the world's illusions. The worshippers of Boash believed that all life was sacred and eternal; that men and women were equal; that lords and peasants, rich and poor, slave and master, man and beast were all alike, all equally worthy, all creatures of god.”

Similarities abound with the Rhoynish and the Fisher Queens before them, and the CotF as well.

Did the dragonriders switch from Team Red to Team Green based on the influence of the maw of the mazes? It’s not at all clear, but an intriguing possibility!

[sweetsunray]

2 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Thanks! That thread by Odin's Beard sure is suggestive. The line about Winterfell as some monstrous stone tree, makes me think especially about the corrupted Shade trees, but obviously it ties castles to "monstrous" trees more generally.

As it relates to Castles, I think the maw of Sandkings may be mixed together with the pyramids from And Seven Times Never Kill Man, in one important respect: the people of Planetos war with one another, with the occupants of one castle or other structure changing up. And at least in some instances, we see newer occupants taking up the behaviors of the previous occupants, not unlike what we see with the Steel Angels and the Jaenshi in ASTNKM.

This is from the section of TWOIAF on Lorath. First, there was a mysterious ancient race of mazemakers, who were eventually wiped out by other peoples:

“In ancient days, the isles were home to the mysterious race of men known as the mazemakers, who vanished long before the dawn of true history, leaving no trace of themselves save for their bones and the mazes they built.

 

Others followed the mazemakers on Lorath in the centuries that followed. For a time the isles were home to a small, dark, hairy people, akin to the men of Ib. Fisherfolk, they lived along the coasts and shunned the great mazes of their predecessors. They in turn were displaced by Andals, pushing north from Andalos to the shores of Lorath Bay and across the bay in longships. Clad in mail and wielding iron swords and axes, the Andals swept across the islands, slaughtering the hairy men in the name of their seven-faced god and taking their women and children as slaves.”

Then there are the underground mazes themselves:

“Sprawling constructs of bewildering complexity, made from blocks of hewn stone, the mazemakers' constructions are scattered across the isles—and one, badly overgrown and sunk deep into the earth, has been found on Essos proper, on the peninsula south of Lorath. Lorassyon, the second largest of the Lorath isles, is home to a vast maze that fills more than three quarters of the surface area of the island and includes four levels beneath the ground, with some passages descending five hundred feet.

Scholars still debate the purpose of these mazes. Were they fortifications, temples, towns? Or did they serve some other, stranger purpose? The mazemakers left no written records, so we shall never know. Their bones tell us that they were massively built and larger than men, though not so large as giants. Some have suggested that mayhaps the mazemakers were born of interbreeding between human men and giant women. We do not known why they disappeared, though Lorathi legend suggests they were destroyed by an enemy from the sea: merlings in some versions of the tale, selkies and walrus-men in others.”

Then Valyrians came to Lorath after other peoples were wiped out, and they did not shun the mazes, In fact, they started to resume the earlier religion of the mazes, trying to open their third eye, equating man and beast, and espousing a philosophy of harmony:

"When men at last returned to the isles to live, they were men from Valyria itself. Thirteen hundred and twenty-two years before the Doom, a sect of religious dissidents left the Freehold to establish a temple upon Lorath's main isle.

 

These new Lorathi were worshippers of Boash, the Blind God. Rejecting all other deities, the followers of Boash ate no flesh, drank no wine, and walked barefoot through the world, clad only in hair shirts and hides. Their eunuch priests wore eyeless hoods in honor of their god; only in darkness, they believed, would their third eye open, allowing them to see the "higher truths" of creation that lay concealed behind the world's illusions. The worshippers of Boash believed that all life was sacred and eternal; that men and women were equal; that lords and peasants, rich and poor, slave and master, man and beast were all alike, all equally worthy, all creatures of god.”

Similarities abound with the Rhoynish and the Fisher Queens before them, and the CotF as well.

Did the dragonriders switch from Team Red to Team Green based on the influence of the maw of the mazes? It’s not at all clear, but an intriguing possibility!

The mazemakers are pre-Dawn age and disappeared already before the hairy men arrived on the islands for thousands of years.

I've laid out Lorath's history next to the Andal one, Norvos and some of the things Illyrio said, and come to the following reconstruction.

The proto-Andals lived in the Hills of Norvos mostly initially, in wooden villages and not knowing any ironwork at the time that Huzhor Amai united the Cymmeri, Zoqora and Gipps against the hairy men around the Silver Sea. The ability to forge iron of the Cymmeri gave Huzhor Amai the edge to displace the hairy men westward away from the Silver. He wore the pelt/skin of the king of hairy men as sign of triumph. The hairy men migrated westwards and conquered the Hills of Norvos from the proto-Andals, pushing the proto-Andals into the peninsula, the Axe.  At some point, the Rhoynar did not like the hairy men living north of their domain, and a prince of Ny Sar killed them and pushed the hairy men towards the northern shores of the Bay of Lorath, and more westward to the Flatlands. The Rhoynar knew how to forge iron too. But the Rhoynar did not want to settle in the chilly high up country with a wan sun, but imo also did not want the hairy men return to the Hills of Norvos when the Rhoynar would retreat. So, they taught the proto-Andals how to work iron, so the proto-Andals would also have an advantage against the hairy men and could function as a buffer. The Rhoynar thereby returned the former home of the proto-Andals to the Andals.

It is around this period that Hugor of the Hill must have lived. Because when the proto-Andals become master of the Hills of Norvos (again) and the Axe, the peninsula where the mazemakers once built one maze on the mainland (the peninsula close to Lothar) ends up being central north of their territory. That is where Hugor met or visited the fortune telling shop of 7 faces of 1 god (sounds familiar already?). With promises of kingdoms and the iron, the Andals test their new might and go after the hairy men along the northern shores at the Bay of Lorath and kill them. Survivors of the hairy men had no other choice but to flee across water and settle on the shores of those islands, meanwhile avoiding the mazes. With the success along the shores of the Bay of Lorath, the Andals then conquered the Flatlands and Velvet Hills, creating the larger kingdom of Andalos.

Eventually, when the Andals begin to build longboats, they attack the last of the hairy men on Lorath, killing the men, enslaving the women and children. The Andals have petty kings in their kingdom, including a king per island (and the biggest has 4 kings all at once at some point) and fight amongst each other for 1000 years (at least on Lorath as far as we know). Then one of those Andal petty kings on the Lorath islands get seriously ambitious and becomes king of them all, building his wooden (still wooden) keep at the heart of the large maze of the second biggest island of Lorath, Lorassyon. And he does not just want to be Andal king of all the islands of Lorath, but king of all Andalos. He wars for 20 years in as many wars and manages just that.

But then Old Valyria already starts to have flourishing freehold sattelite cities, including Norvos that was built by the bearded priests in the Hills of Norvos. And this mighty king of Andalos, Qarlon the Great, gets its in his head to conquer Norvos, once Norvos blockades the Noyne. He wins two battles against Norvosi in the Hills of Norvos, and then decides to march on Norvos and lay siege on it. The Norvosi called in the aid of the Valyrians, who took off with 100 dragons and burned Qarlon and his army in the Hills of Norvos, and then continued to Lorath burning all and everyone there. It's called the Scouring of Lorath, and it even scorched and blackened the stonework of the mazes. 

It takes about a century before some Ibbinese live and fish from the shores, still shunning the mazes. Not so long after the cult of Boash arrives in 1463 BC on the island and manage to settle their cult amongst the mazes without issues. They only disappeared, because more freeriders and escaped slaves who weren't Boash settled on the islands too, and began to outnumber them.

The info on this history is severely splintered in the World Book (Lorath history, Norvos, the Andals, what Illyrio says about the Flatlands).

• The migratory wave for Lorath says mazemakers -> hairy men -> Andals until the scouring -> Ibbinese -> Boash
• The migratory wave for Andalos says they originated from the Axe (that has no known ruins of cities) and then conquered all, chasing off the hairy men, and at some point must have learned working iron from the Rhoynar.
• The migratory wave for Norvos says the original inhabitants of those hills is not known or under debate, but with many leaning Andal because of the wooden villages. The original inhabitants were driven off by a migration of hairy men. Who were chased off by the Rhoynar who didn't stay.
• Illyrio claims the Flatlands used to be land of hairy men who were all killed by the Andals when they grafted their kingdom Andalos.

It's a bit of a puzzle, but we can put it together, and when we do, we discover a proto-Andalos comprising of the Hills of Norvos and the Axe with that mainland maze central north of them, and a time period that would coincide with the iron forging Rhoynar having a motive to teach neighbours how to work it.