A Sword Without a Hilt

[kissdbyfire]

4 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Real good gang.   I am hopelessly confused now.   Gotta go find some rusty rubies on the Gods Eye! 

The rubies are on the shore of the Quiet Isle!
 

[Curled Finger]

Just now, kissdbyfire said:

The rubies are on the shore of the Quiet Isle!
 

Thank you!  Just poking a little fun...

[kissdbyfire]

Just now, Curled Finger said:

Thank you!  Just poking a little fun...

Ah gotcha! I was confused myself at that point, and after I posted the above reply I had to stop and think… God's Eye, Isle of Faces = weirwoods (w/ no two faces alike) and Quiet Isle = rubies and other goodies on its shores… right? Right? 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Ah gotcha! I was confused myself at that point, and after I posted the above reply I had to stop and think… God's Eye, Isle of Faces = weirwoods (w/ no two faces alike) and Quiet Isle = rubies and other goodies on its shores… right? Right? 

This comment will be my reference from now on. No more confusion of Isles!

[sweetsunray]

On the ice & fire combined for green team: I'm also reminded of Symeon Star Eyes with his "double bladed" sword. He used sapphires for eyes, but if he turns out to have some fire aspect before giving himself sapphire eyes, then he was ice & fire (double bladed).

 

I also want to alert you on a winning ticket color scheme: gold green. It blows everything out of the water so to speak.

It's the Dr. Weird ghost superhero. It dates back to one of George's oldest short stories "Only Kids are Afraid in the Dark", but he's used it several times already in the histories and some three plot lines are being lined up to evolve into Dr. Weird application for tWoW.

In the superhero world that George wrote that story ,Dr. Weird was actually a spirit of a dead man who used time travel to sort of stay alive. His superhero suit is green-gold. In the short story, some fool of a murderous thief (Jasper) ends up accidentally opening a portal for a soul destroying demon prince (black-red) and he zaps Jasper's mind and soul out of existence. Dr. Weird on the other side of this world notices something's wrong and goes to this temple (where the demon was once worshipped) and discovers poor Jasper (Drogo's state is like Jasper's - alive, but nothing there anymore). Dr. Weird and the demon exchange threats and words, and Dr. Weird destroys another subdemon (a red one that serves big top demon). They agree to an ultimate challenge. But Dr. Weird uses Jasper to trick the superdemon: he dresses Jasper in his green-gold suit, and sort of "skinchanges" Jasper to animate Jasper. Superdemon tries to zap the presumed Dr. Weird out of existence (he's a soul destroyer, and Dr. Weird is only soul), but Dr. Weird always leaves Jasper's body right as the bolts hit Jasper. Then he enters Jasper's body again, and superdemon doesn't get why his powers don't work and eventually tires out. That's when Dr. Weird throws a bolt of golden light (like a sun) at the demon and sends him back to where he came from. (the name of this superdemon is actually mentioned in Fire & Blood, as being worshipped at Lys, and by Viserys II wife Rogare)

Here is a Dr. Weird scenario that George used in Dorne during the Dornish Wars with Aegon on the black-red Balerion:

After Rhaenys was shot out of the Dornish sky, Visenya and Aegon went on a burning revenge rampage. One of the castles that Aegon attacked was Ghost Hill of House Toland. They sent out a champion to face Aegon. He was killed by Aegon but found the castle empty and abandoned. The man he killed was actually the fool in green-gold motley. The Lord and his family had abandoned the castle and hid. Their original sigil was a ghost, but after their fool faced Aegon and was killed they changed their sigil to a green dragon eating its own tail on a gold field. House Toland recaptured their castle, once Aegon left. It was eventually the Prince Martell of Sunspear (a spear with a sun as sigil, like Dr. Weird's arm) who forced Aegon to accept a peace.

It returns in the dance of the dragons: the "greens" and their champion Aegon II has a golden dragon Sunfyre. His sigil was a three headed golden dragon. The Blacks initially manage to defeat the greens and take KL. Together with Aemond on green Vhagar, Aegon takes out the Red Queen, Meleys (and Rhaynys Targaryen, the queen who never was). This is the combo of green-gold taking out the red (sorry Rhaenys, I like you). But not without cost - both Sunfyre and Aegon were badly hurt, and his arm badly damaged. Unbeknowst to Rhaenyra, Aegon II and Sunfyre hid at Dragonstone. The moment she returned to Dragonstone, Rhaneyra was taken and captured by surprise, and euhm returned to the dragon (Sunfyre).  

In the current storyline we have several Dr. Weird scenario's being set up, put in place:

• Jon (with his burned hand) has Ghost and Mel sees him as man - then wolf - then man again. This is a Dr. Weird hiding tactic. And we have a fool Patchface with a broken mind who could be skinchanged by a greenseer. Meanwhile Mel is a terribly red queen. His sword has Ghost's head for a hilt. It's a ghostsword.
• Aegon VI leads the Golden company, while Aegon was believed to be dead, after years and years of hiding. And he's set up to join forces with the Martells of Sunspear, against yet another red queen, Cersei. Aegon Vi and Jon combined would make for a gold-green combo. He needs a sword too.
• Stannis with his Lightbringer (a magical sword) that seems to have a piece of the sun in it when it glows, a claim in a letter that Stannis is dead, and he's surrounded by green treemen and a battle with a weirwood on ice lakes against a red helm demon Ramsay. Oh and we have another potential "fool" to be skinchanged by Bran.

  A ghost-sword, a sunsword and a third, but which one? I know people think of Blackfyre, but is there some type of "green sword" in play?

 

 

Edited January 24, 2023 by sweetsunray

[kissdbyfire]

@sweetsunray  isn’t Thoros sword described as green or having green flames when he sets it on fire? 

[sweetsunray]

10 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

@sweetsunray  isn’t Thoros sword described as green or having green flames when he sets it on fire? 

Thoros used wildfire to put his swords to flame, yes. Maybe Aegon VI gets a cache of wildfire? Uses it to put Blackfyre to flame? Or the BwB ends up split with Thoros supporting Aegon VI

[LynnS]

16 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

Almost my exact thought in my initial post.  Yours makes me wonder what exactly Brienne and Oathkeeper are as touched upon a little later.  OK makes Brienne a better fighter, just as Jon credits LC for making him a better fighter.  In my very narrow tunnel Jon and Brienne are the hilts for the magic of those swords just as I anticipate Jorah and Jamie to be for the swords I expect them to wield.  I am tripping over the classifications or delineations between the magic of ice and the Children as our goodsisters, @sweetsunray and @kissdbyfire have kindly explained.  If I can really get them separated in my head canon the VS swords are real fire magic and dang it, they should be, we have certainly read it enough.  What's with my refusal to accept this wholly?  Dragonsteel.  Specifically COTF supplied dragonsteel.  That would be the same as dragonglass (classification), not ice magic and my brain hurts.  Hrm...earth magic didn't do the trick the first time around?  

I'm as confused about this sword business as you and no doubt Kissed by Fire and Sweetsunray have a better grasp of the magic than I.  

I'm expecting not only fire and ice magic but light magic as well.  So swords of fire, ice and light.  I'm coming to this conclusion from my research into Tolkiens use of fire and light as weapons and defense (a sword and a shield).  Specifically by Gandalf but also Galadriel's gift to Frodo of the light of Earendel (to be used in dark places when all other light fails).  From Tolkien's letters; I've learned that Earendel is an archaic Anglo-Saxon term for the dawn and evening star (Venus).  And so we have the Dawn sword alive with light.

This seems more significant to me since the sword is forged from the heart of a fallen star.  More so than how it was forged and what it's made of; what does it actually do? 

There seems to be some connective tissue between the Dawn sword and the Faith of the Seven with their legend of the seven stars coming down from the sky and walking the earth as men (women?).  Hugor places the light of their stars as jewels in his crown.  The crystal crown of the high septon in other words.  Something that separates pure white light into a rainbow of colors.  

I think the Faith Militant are the bleeding stars foretold in the prophesy from Asshai since they carve stars into their flesh and the Dawn sword may have been wielded by one of the original seven.  I don't think it's a coincidence that their swords have a crystal in the pommel and the constellation Sword of the Morning has a white star in it's pommel.  I'm expecting the Dawn sword to have a diamond (adamant, Galadriels ring) in its hilt.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

48 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm expecting not only fire and ice magic but light magic as well. 

This may or may not be relevant, but I figured I'd copy this comment I made in a discussion about "songs" and harmony across the three teams, in my "Landkings" topic thread.

*****

The "song" of the Three Singers, like the psionic collective of A Song for Lya, seems based on the metaphor of harmony. 

So maybe it's worth mentioning that according to the trichromatic theory of color vision, the human brain is primarily tuned to light in three wavelength bandwidths, corresponding to red, green, and blue. Other colors we perceive derive from the various tunings across these three dimensions (and RGB color space for computers replicates this). When all three dimensions are maxed out, we perceive white. When all are diminished, we perceive black.

It is why I cheekily named my idea the Trichromatic Theory of Magic, but maybe there is a dimension of harmony that he is trying to evoke.

Things have been out of whack on the planet for a while, probably ever since the cataclysm that led to the Long Night. From the Rhoynish, we have this story:

According to these tales, the return of the sun came only when a hero convinced Mother Rhoyne's many children—lesser gods such as the Crab King and the Old Man of the River—to put aside their bickering and join together to sing a secret song that brought back the day.

The light metaphor might work here: all three dimensions are maxed out --> a bright shining sun.

I will admit it all sounds too hippie-dippie for me. GRRM is a hippie at heart, but he has to reconcile those feelings with a much more sober view of life's complexities and humanity's many faults. So if this harmonization across teams is relevant, I'm not sure how it will fit into his story, tonally speaking.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

So maybe it's worth mentioning that according to the trichromatic theory of color vision,

This is a very complex theory for my brain and I tend to want to simplify things so I can comprehend them.  In terms of the colors red, blue and green;  my mind goes to fire imagery.  We have red and blue flames but also green:

Quote

 

A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves.

Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting off in another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran's Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more wary. Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter. He could hear his brother's breathless laughter as Rickon dashed across the hard-packed earth on little baby legs.

 

I'm not sure how the green fire translates into another sword or how to connect it to the discussion here.  Since we are looking at GRRM visiting old friends (his own stories); I'm considering that he is also visiting Tolkien since he brought it up by saying 'that's not how he would do things."  So how would he do things?

The rings of power are ruby, sapphire and diamond (adamant);  but some of the elemental magic is mixed.  Not unlike obsidian, a form of crystal called frozen fire.  So a balance of fire, ice and earth.  Robert (In Deep Geek) thinks that magic is a power that can use different elements; that there is not really a thing as elemental magic as such.  If I understand him correctly (and I' not sure I do). 

It seems to me that crystals or minerals like rubies, sapphires, diamonds focus or concentrate certain elements for use by sorcerers.  Mel's ruby for example.  Bran likens the Wall to a sapphire and this may be something that Mel recognizes about it and why she says Jon can access this magic if he chooses. 

What is the green fire?  Is it water magic in the unfrozen state?

[Curled Finger]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

I'm as confused about this sword business as you and no doubt Kissed by Fire and Sweetsunray have a better grasp of the magic than I.  

I'm expecting not only fire and ice magic but light magic as well.  So swords of fire, ice and light.  I'm coming to this conclusion from my research into Tolkiens use of fire and light as weapons and defense (a sword and a shield).  Specifically by Gandalf but also Galadriel's gift to Frodo of the light of Earendel (to be used in dark places when all other light fails).  From Tolkien's letters; I've learned that Earendel is an archaic Anglo-Saxon term for the dawn and evening star (Venus).  And so we have the Dawn sword alive with light.

This seems more significant to me since the sword is forged from the heart of a fallen star.  More so than how it was forged and what it's made of; what does it actually do? 

There seems to be some connective tissue between the Dawn sword and the Faith of the Seven with their legend of the seven stars coming down from the sky and walking the earth as men (women?).  Hugor places the light of their stars as jewels in his crown.  The crystal crown of the high septon in other words.  Something that separates pure white light into a rainbow of colors.  

I think the Faith Militant are the bleeding stars foretold in the prophesy from Asshai since they carve stars into their flesh and the Dawn sword may have been wielded by one of the original seven.  I don't think it's a coincidence that their swords have a crystal in the pommel and the constellation Sword of the Morning has a white star in it's pommel.  I'm expecting the Dawn sword to have a diamond (adamant, Galadriels ring) in its hilt.

Ah magic.  Bleeding, beguiling magic.  I think Dawn is a key.  However, I can't help but be awed by your wonderful description of the light in Dawn and even the unlooked for 7 here.  That's just bitchen, LynnS.  

[sweetsunray]

58 minutes ago, LynnS said:

What is the green fire? 

Green fire is wild fire: alchemy. For Rickon it implies he will be wild, cannot be tamed and fierce.

Edited January 24, 2023 by sweetsunray

[Evolett]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Bran likens the Wall to a sapphire

I've been trying to find this passage. Do you remember where it can be found?

[kissdbyfire]

@LynnS, I only remember Bran thinking the Wall looked like blue crystal but not sapphires. Same as Evolett, I’m curious about this! 
 

AGoT, Bran III

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

[LynnS]

7 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I only remember Bran thinking the Wall looked like blue crystal but not sapphires. Same as Evolett, I’m curious about this! 

 

49 minutes ago, Evolett said:

I've been trying to find this passage. Do you remember where it can be found?

Sorry!  My mistake.  Blue crystal it is.  Blue crystals are sapphires in my brain.

[Nadden]

On 1/19/2023 at 9:33 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Of course, GRRM needs readers to understand that supernatural powers really do exist in ASOIAF, and so we get an early glimpse of the Others and the animated corpse of Waymar Royce right at the start of the series. Yet afterwards, such moments are few and far between. And even that AGOT Prologue is structured around Waymar’s certainty about naturalistic explanations for what Will reported, a stance that we soon see pervades Westeros, largely thanks to the maesters.

To your point, reality is based on perception. And in the scene with Waymar left eye bleeding with blood red as fire and the other eye burning blue like ice we are lead to believe that he has been transformed into some other worldly being. In truth, Will forgets he is holding the broken hilt of Waymar’s bejeweled hilt in his nerveless fingers pommel side up. There’s a sapphire that matches the other two sapphires he saw fixed on the guard of the hilt when Waymar held it on high to begin a duel with his own shadow. 
 

The white shadow he fought was his own in an obsidian black mirror, “the great rock”. The children of the forest laugh at him when a piece or shard of frozen fire breaks away and lands in his eye. The children had been meditating, not dead, not sleeping, scrying.

But this is the beauty of Martin’s writing. We to start believing in ghostly beings.

In fact, it was Vic Tandy’s shivering sword, just like here, that helped debunk the myth.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Nadden

[GZ Bloodraven]

On 1/19/2023 at 9:33 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

For a while now, I have been trying to highlight various hints in that story that suggest to me that all magic on Planetos boils down to the weirwoods and their cousins. And that these entities may indeed be alien to Planetos, a strange invasive species come from afar long ago. Aside from the explanation working for me on a plot level given the various clues, one reason I think it makes sense is on a thematic level, with respect to how magic is treated throughout the story. Magic really does seem to be alien to the order of the planet, a global disruptor.

 

This is so violently correct it hurts. I think a lot of people sometimes think that George has developed a magic system, in any meaningful sense, and I really don't think he has or wants to. It's just the basic principle of "we all die, and blood can do things" and that's what the weirwoods are, and they can connect all the consciousnesses and memories that they tap into, just like the wights, and glass candles, and shade-of-the-evening, and the Faces of the Faceless Men. I don't think that they are alien though, no more alien than the Children of the Forest. I think it is rather men that are the global disruptor, for good and for bad. Men chopped down the weirwoods and farmed blackbarked trees for its drug and feebily attempted to live in the jungles of Sothoryos. And it is, as you say, up to men to break those systems of power that lead to their deaths and prevent progress.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

11 hours ago, GZ Bloodraven said:

This is so violently correct it hurts. I think a lot of people sometimes think that George has developed a magic system, in any meaningful sense, and I really don't think he has or wants to. It's just the basic principle of "we all die, and blood can do things" and that's what the weirwoods are, and they can connect all the consciousnesses and memories that they tap into, just like the wights, and glass candles, and shade-of-the-evening, and the Faces of the Faceless Men. I don't think that they are alien though, no more alien than the Children of the Forest. I think it is rather men that are the global disruptor, for good and for bad. Men chopped down the weirwoods and farmed blackbarked trees for its drug and feebily attempted to live in the jungles of Sothoryos. And it is, as you say, up to men to break those systems of power that lead to their deaths and prevent progress.

Thanks! "Blood can do things" sounds maddeningly simple, but it seems to get to the heart of magic as GRRM writes about it in ASOIAF.

As for whether weirwoods and magic in general are alien, they certainly don't need to be alien. I agree that human interference is the real disruptor, perhaps the first abomination.

But I can't ignore the Lovecraftian aspects of the weirwoods--they're not simply a vicious or severe aspect of natural life, but are weird in every sense of the word. And there's the myth of the God-on-Earth, who came to earth from the heavens, traveled the world on a pearl palanquin carried by his hundred wives, then flew back into heaven. The GoE strikes me as very Garth-like, which I think mostly stands in for weirwoods and weirwood magic. I buy into Moon Meteor Theory with respect to the Long Night, but I think that the weirwood psy is the real mechanism behind the cataclysm. it's the same mechanism that brought the Hammer of the Waters to the Arm of Dorne, and also that flooded the Thousand Islands of Essos.

One way to tie up these various strands, along with other passages that concern female giants catapulting men or antlered men as well as boulders, is to hypothesize that the weirwoods came to Planetos via something like panspermia, and this reproductive mechanism was weaponized over time to cause great devastation. That would be "alien" in some sense of the word, yet the weirwoods could have populated the world eons before humanoid life forms ever emerged. They would very much be the Great Old Ones of his story. Alien, and yet ancient, mistaken for gods.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Phylum of Alexandria

[James West]

A sword without a hilt is a blade that can cut the wielder.  Magic is one example, sure.  But people are as well.  Robert Strong is a weapon that can cut Cersei and Qyburn.  Arya is a weapon that has already cut the Faceless Men because she's too wild to handle.  Power cut down Robb Stark.  He let the allure of kingship get in his head but that power, a power he lacked adequate discipline to wield, cut his head.  

[Craving Peaches]

7 hours ago, James West said:

Power cut down Robb Stark.  He let the allure of kingship get in his head

No he didn't.

7 hours ago, James West said:

but that power, a power he lacked adequate discipline to wield, cut his head. 

Some people on these forums are letting the power of being able to post get to their head. They've gone mad and think just because they can post, it means they can spew whatever nonsense they want, even if it conflicts with the text itself.