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A throwaway line, or clue about the Hammer of the Waters?


Sandy Clegg
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1 hour ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The red wanderer is 99% an actual mineral-like astronomical object, possibly also the Red Comet.

I think maesters and people can distinguish between a "star" and a comet. Our Mars is also a red wanderer, appearing as a red star to us, wandering about in comparison to constellations...

And yes, it was exactly my point that if people on different sides of a wall refer to the same celestial body and constellations with slightly different names, then that is certainly true at the other side of the planet and 6000 years before that.

It's quite clear that we're given a celestial timing for the Blood Betrayal, which seems logically to coincide with the best Thief moment, as the same period starts around Val's return (she challenges Jon to steal into her bed, while dressed in all white... and she's an expert on "stealing"). And when the maiden made of light is gone the lion of night (the thief/red wanderer) goes "berserk". The Lion of Night is an AA figure, not a BE figure.

 

Edited by sweetsunray
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As for the bug and stingng arm sentence. In relation to the arm of Dorne, the Long Night and dragons... the bug "flying" away can be linked to dragons.

The first people that likely came to Westeros were the people that made a Black Stone fortress on Battle Isle. The Black Stone fortress is made of fused stone, exactly like the Valyrian roads, but way way before Valyaria. The maesters are somewhat dogmatic about the belief that dragons and dragonriders only ever existed since Valyria. Bran's vision of dragons in Asshai, the lay-out of the empires beyond the Bones and the tales of Great Empire of the Dawn make clear that these god-emperors had dragons and pale light magical swords (like Dawn). They are most likely the proto Valyarians.

Oldtown and Hightowers have very suggestive links to BE, whereas the Daynes far more with Amethyst Empress. Heck even their story on the founding of the Dayne castle about "tracking a fallen star" has a dual interpretation: you can't actually "track" or follow the "trace" of a meteor (unless you have modern day real world equipment) or a dragon to hop on and fly. Because a meteorite's fall is not like  a comet's fly-by. It's like the Daynes say they followed the head-dragon's tracks, but instead of going as far as Battle Isle, they settled for Starfall.

BE's people and dragonriders were not likely to remain friendly with CotF or giants.

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20 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I think maesters and people can distinguish between a "star" and a comet. Our Mars is also a red wanderer, appearing as a red star to us, wandering about in comparison to constellations...

Wasn't there a theory a while ago that said the ASOIAF equivalent of Mars maybe be the source of the Red Comet, or comets even? Something inspired by the War of the Worlds novel? 

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12 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Wasn't there a theory a while ago that said the ASOIAF equivalent of Mars maybe be the source of the Red Comet, or comets even? Something inspired by the War of the Worlds novel? 

Don't know.

Just obvious that the "red wanderer" is a planet similar to our Mars. The Greek word that gave us the word "planet" literally means "wanderer". Greeks saw stars that moved about way differently than the other stars that formed constellations. So, they called these stars "wanderers", aka "planetai". When George writes "red wanderer" he's writing "red planet" (which for us is Mars).

It's possible to regard the red comet as war-related, as well as the red wanderer, but the two are definitely not the same celestial body. One is a planet (a wanderer), the other is a comet (from the greek "long haired star")

The red wanderer in the moonmaid would be a yearly period (about 20 days). The red comet a far rarer event.

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1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

Don't know.

Just obvious that the "red wanderer" is a planet similar to our Mars. The Greek word that gave us the word "planet" literally means "wanderer". Greeks saw stars that moved about way differently than the other stars that formed constellations. So, they called these stars "wanderers", aka "planetai". When George writes "red wanderer" he's writing "red planet" (which for us is Mars).

It's possible to regard the red comet as war-related, as well as the red wanderer, but the two are definitely not the same celestial body. One is a planet (a wanderer), the other is a comet (from the greek "long haired star")

I'm just curious as to their connection, especially as after reading all @LmL's mythical astronomy theories, the one thing that struck me as odd was that a comet could strike the moon, yet somehow survive to return millennia later. If the Red Wanderer planet were the source of these comets, perhaps they are not comets after all but fragments of the planet, which is damaged somehow. 

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1 hour ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I see the Jon/Halfhand element here as the entree, not the main course, but it may have its own symbolism, true.

Why do you see the Jon/Halfhand bit as separate from Sam's? It's Jon who introduces the idea of the "bug" and compares himself to it. Sam strives to swat the bug but misses and this analogy is also true in reference to Jon. Sam would never prevail against Jon in combat. The Halfhand might also represent the CotF whose fingers do not add up to five. It's not an exact count - Qohrin has 1 finger and a thumb - but it could be a nod in that direction.  

Sam as the "swatter" has also been described as a leviathan:

Quote

Dusky dogs and Dornishmen, pig boys, cripples, cretins, and now a black-clad whale. And here I thought leviathans were grey.” 

A huge whale or leviathan will cause a mighty splash when it rises out of and falls back into the sea - a possible allusion to the "Hammer of the Waters." The murals at the Manderly's Merman Court depict a kraken fighting a leviathan:

Quote

Behind the dais a kraken and grey leviathan were locked in battle beneath the painted waves. 

The kraken could represent the magical force that counters the leviathan's swatting (or Hammer), causing the intended purpose of eliminating the symbolic bugs to fail. 

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Just Sam being clumsy.

The Hammer of the Water must refer to the way waves break against the rocks:

Quote

The shore was all sharp rocks and glowering cliffs, and the castle seemed one with the rest, its towers and walls and bridges quarried from the same grey-black stone, wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green lichen, speckled by the droppings of the same seabirds. The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.
A Clash of Kings - Theon I

Quote

Outside, beneath the snoring of his drowned men and the keening of the wind, he could hear the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his god calling him to battle.
A Feast for Crows - The Prophet

Quote

The cabin had begun to tilt and jump, going this way and that as the waves hammered at the hull of the ship.
A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX

Why would it be a meteor? There is no mention of a big rock or ball of fire coming down from the sky to describe the breaking of the Arm...
The waves hammering the rocks, the Hammer of the Water.
Such destructive waves must be a tsunami, caused by an earthquake:

Quote

The giant bellowed again, a sound that shook the leaves in the trees, and slammed his maul against the ground. The shaft of it was six feet of gnarled oak, the head a stone as big as a loaf of bread. The impact made the ground shake.
A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

Quote

And so they did, gathering in their hundreds (some say on the Isle of Faces), and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice (a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwood, one version of the tale goes, whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own young). And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves. The Summer Sea joined the narrow sea, and the bridge between Essos and Westeros vanished for all time.
The World of Ice and Fire - Dorne: The Breaking

"waking up giants" is a way to describe an earthquake.
The Children, trying the stop the First Men colonization, provoked an earthquake to destroy the Arm of Dorne and later, to flood the Neck.
Pushed back into the Land of Always Winter, the Children understood that it would be useless to do that a third time and, instead, made a group of warriors to fight for them, change the tide of war, they made the Others.

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6 hours ago, Evolett said:

Why do you see the Jon/Halfhand bit as separate from Sam's? It's Jon who introduces the idea of the "bug" and compares himself to it. Sam strives to swat the bug but misses and this analogy is also true in reference to Jon. Sam would never prevail against Jon in combat. The Halfhand might also represent the CotF whose fingers do not add up to five. It's not an exact count - Qohrin has 1 finger and a thumb - but it could be a nod in that direction.  

Sam as the "swatter" has also been described as a leviathan:

All good points. And I do see how it’s possible to go down the path of more complex analogy here. I just personally feel that in this case George is actually trying to be a little more succinct and to the point.
 

The book (AFFC) starts out with the 3 apples + arrows analogy which is already very complex. But here I think he’s just giving a straight-up hint: the breaking of the arm of Dorne was an unintentional consequence of something else. 
 

I have to continue my reread, but it seems George’s style to lay subtle clues like this and then expand upon them in later chapters so I’ll keep seeing what else I can find.

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8 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I'm just curious as to their connection, especially as after reading all @LmL's mythical astronomy theories, the one thing that struck me as odd was that a comet could strike the moon, yet somehow survive to return millennia later. If the Red Wanderer planet were the source of these comets, perhaps they are not comets after all but fragments of the planet, which is damaged somehow. 

Since characters can still see the "red wanderer" as a "wanderer" going through its yearly path in relation to the constellations, the "red planet" is still intact, following its path around the sun.

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3 hours ago, TheBlackSwan said:

"waking up giants" is a way to describe an earthquake.
The Children, trying the stop the First Men colonization, provoked an earthquake to destroy the Arm of Dorne and later, to flood the Neck.

Well, that's one interpretation sure. George's name "Hammer of the Waters" is both specific and vague, like a lot of his history world-building, and you'll find supporters of various definitions of the term on these forums. Was the Hammer actually 'the water'? Or did a 'hammer' strike the waters? It's like staring at an illusion where you can see both pictures at once. Right now, we just don't know which actually happened so we have to sift through the text for crumbs.

The main reason I side with the Hammer involving the "summoning down" of an extra-terrestrial body is from reading way too much @LmL which has probably skewed my thinking. :)  I'm not sure an earthquake -> tsunami would have the effect of rupturing a continent in two - it's possible, but also doesn't seem to fit in with all the moon/comet clues George has laid throughout the books. 

 

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Since characters can still see the "red wanderer" as a "wanderer" going through its yearly path in relation to the constellations, the "red planet" is still intact, following its path around the sun.

Indeed. But isn't it possible for the Red Wanderer to be not wholly intact? Not destroyed, simply 'torn'? 

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30 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Indeed. But isn't it possible for the Red Wanderer to be not wholly intact? Not destroyed, simply 'torn'? 

The impact would put the remainder in a different path and alter its mass, and then Keppler's law would cause it to have the remainder have a different path, and the torn part would become the red wanderer's moon/satellite (aka what happened with earth and the moon). So, no I don't think anything that drastic occurred with the red wanderer, not with George pointing out how regularly cyclic it is and hinting it was since the Great Empire of the Dawn.

But here's a possible solution to the idea of the red wanderer and red comet both being Lion of Night:

  • When the Lion of Night is mentioned together with the Maiden made of Light this is "red wanderer/planet in moonmaid constellation"
  • When the Maiden made of Light turns away and the Lion of Night came forth in his wroth we now have a sky where the stars are either not visible anymore (like a nuclear winter? or heavy volcanic eruption? Dust in atmosphere that prevents stars from being seen for a long period) or the constellation has moved beneath the horizon (which it would do yearly for months as with most constellations). The Lion of Night "comes forth" suggests that a red object becomes very visible as if close and the "wroth" would be like a streak of "dragonfire". In other words, in this phrase the Lion of Night would have been the red comet.

Conclusion: the blood betrayal occurred during the Best Time to Steal a woman (red planet in moonmaid constellation), and after the blood betrayal, something happened that obscured the stars out of sight and this coincided with the passing of the red comet. Celestially both red planet and red comet are two different objects, but the people living in those times conflated them both for imaginative/poetic/tale reasons. To them it looked as if the red wanderer (a god) was so angry that he decided to go out of orbit, come very close and breath fire in his wroth (the tail of the red comet). It just was a celestial coincidence of two different celestial objects (a planet and a comet) doing their thing in the eye of the beholder almost simultaneously. The elite would have known these were different things, but the singers and commoners needed to make meaning out of it. And that gives a better story ;)

 

Edited by sweetsunray
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With regards to the Qartheen claim about the origin of dragons, I would caution against taking that literally.

There is enough world book info on the Great Empire of the Dawn and Asshai to back the idea that this civilization had dragons and dragonriders (elite) - such as the 5 forts of fused black stone. Asshai's present state since the LN and the tales of the collapse of that empire, with now only the Golden Empire of Yi Ti remaining (Yi Ti means "remains"of the dead) makes it impossible for me to think the dragons only came into being then.

They already had dragons for a long time, and built that great empire of the Dawn with it, imo, from the Bones until Asshai. But the tales of the BE and "slavery" suggests he was an expanionist, who went beyond the Bones, westward, including as far as Westeros on Battle Isle. BE wanted to be emperor of the whole planet. Qarth and the Qaathi of the grasslands were west of the Bones. So, from their historical POV the dragons came after the cataclysm that caused the Long Night, not before. They hadn't seen or knew of fire breathing dragons before that westward expansion.

Edited by sweetsunray
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5 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Well, that's one interpretation sure. George's name "Hammer of the Waters" is both specific and vague, like a lot of his history world-building, and you'll find supporters of various definitions of the term on these forums. Was the Hammer actually 'the water'? Or did a 'hammer' strike the waters? It's like staring at an illusion where you can see both pictures at once. Right now, we just don't know which actually happened so we have to sift through the text for crumbs.

I think the quotes are quite suggestive, there is the waves hammering, the giants shaking the ground. If it can describe an earthquake and tsunami how could they omit the big rock coming from outer space?
Bringing a meteor doesn't seem to fit with the magic of the Children, with how they are in touch with nature.

5 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The main reason I side with the Hammer involving the "summoning down" of an extra-terrestrial body is from reading way too much @LmL which has probably skewed my thinking. :)  I'm not sure an earthquake -> tsunami would have the effect of rupturing a continent in two - it's possible, but also doesn't seem to fit in with all the moon/comet clues George has laid throughout the books.

Yeah I find his theory too tinfoily.

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

With regards to the Qartheen claim about the origin of dragons, I would caution against taking that literally.

There is enough world book info on the Great Empire of the Dawn and Asshai to back the idea that this civilization had dragons and dragonriders (elite) - such as the 5 forts of fused black stone. Asshai's present state since the LN and the tales of the collapse of that empire, with now only the Golden Empire of Yi Ti remaining (Yi Ti means "remains"of the dead) makes it impossible for me to think the dragons only came into being then.

They already had dragons for a long time, and built that great empire of the Dawn with it, imo, from the Bones until Asshai. But the tales of the BE and "slavery" suggests he was an expanionist, who went beyond the Bones, westward, including as far as Westeros on Battle Isle. BE wanted to be emperor of the whole planet. Qarth and the Qaathi of the grasslands were west of the Bones. So, from their historical POV the dragons came after the cataclysm that caused the Long Night, not before. They hadn't seen or knew of fire breathing dragons before that westward expansion.

There is no evidence that the Great Empire of the Dawn had dragons.
They aren't known as dragon riders. There is no proof that they built the Five Forts, we just have "some people claim". Its frontiers are define and Asshaii was not part of it.
Ashai'i don't know who were the ancient people who taught the Valyrians their arts and how to tame the dragons, they say they came from the Shadows which was not part of the GEotD.
And Yandel dismiss that legend because if Men had dragons, they would have used it to conquer. It clearly implies that those people weren't men which fit with the whole "elder races" that populated the world before the arrival of humans, like the Children of the Forest, presented in TWOIAF.
The Bloodstone Emperor is clearly a nod to Lovecraft. Lovecraft has stories about the The Church of Wisdom worshipping a black stone with red veins from outer space, practising blood sacrifices for an evil god.

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15 hours ago, TheBlackSwan said:

There is no evidence that the Great Empire of the Dawn had dragons.

They aren't known as dragon riders. There is no proof that they built the Five Forts, we just have "some people claim". Its frontiers are define and Asshaii was not part of it.
Ashai'i don't know who were the ancient people who taught the Valyrians their arts and how to tame the dragons, they say they came from the Shadows which was not part of the GEotD.
And Yandel dismiss that legend because if Men had dragons, they would have used it to conquer. It clearly implies that those people weren't men which fit with the whole "elder races" that populated the world before the arrival of humans, like the Children of the Forest, presented in TWOIAF.
The Bloodstone Emperor is clearly a nod to Lovecraft. Lovecraft has stories about the The Church of Wisdom worshipping a black stone with red veins from outer space, practising blood sacrifices for an evil god.

Maester yandel dismisses the existence of greenseers, and a whole lot of stuff. When Yandel dismisses something look closer. Same for Luwin dismissing magic. Yandel dismisses the existence of proto-dragonriders despite being so close to it, when he elaborates on the Black Stone at Battle Isle. "What an enigma! Black fused stone, but missing the frivolity of the Valyarians, predating the Valyarians. And we have evidence that some people settled here before the arrival of the First Men. Even tales about dragons. Oh and we have an Uthor (Uther Pendragon - aka head dragon). It's almost as if some other lost people who used to be dragonriders settled here. But that can't be, because I accept that Valyrians were the first. Certainly not the Hightowers!" :rolleyes:

Who says they didn't conquer? Have you looked at the map how big the "empire" was? Leng + Yi Ti + Hyrkoon + Jogos Nhai + Asshai. That looks like a big chunk of the map conquered. And if these people migrated after the collapse of their empire and mingled with some promising sheep herders at a peninsula, there's no need to "teach" them anything. What if the dragonriding Valyrians were mostly people who fled and migrated across the Bones to Valyria absorbing the local sheepherders, and then their claim that they were the first to know about dragonriding still works. And they conquered a great deal after that.

No it's not confirmed who built the five forts exactly. Some claim it was the Pearl Emperor who built it. This would have been the first dynasty of the Great Empire of the Dawn. They are of the exact same durable fused material as anything else that dragonfire helped to fuse. So, they were most likely built by people who rode dragons. And the five forts are at the border of what was once the Great Empire of the Dawn. Hmmmm. Who could it have been?

It's like the claim of the Last Hero wielding a sword of dragonsteel. Hmmm, how is it possible that some bloke during the LN wielded a sword that was referred to as dragonsteel, "before there were Valyrians and dragonriders". Well duh, because there were proto Valyarians, who had a nice unique one of a kind steel sword with the same properties of Valyrian Steel, that can give off light just the ghosts Dany sees, who just happen to have eyes like gemstones exactly like the dynasties are named of the Great Empire of the Dawn. Daynes, Dawn, Daenys, Daenerys...Hmmmm. Could Yandel be wrong? 

Or the Grey King slaying the "sea" dragon Nagga, making its bones for its hall and living of its fires, after death. For some reason Nagga's bones still stand (dragon bones are as near indestructible). I'm more inclined to consider Nagga a pre-Valyarian dragon that got killed and plummeted into the sea, until the carcass washed ashore the Iron Islands. The maesters like to claim the Ironborn were First Men, despite the very obvious issue that the First Men migrated via the land bridge and weren't the best of mariners. Hmmm, another anomaly. But let's dismiss iron, durable dragon bones, a fused seastone chair (albeit greasy) and marining, because "there were no dragons and no dragonriders before Valyaria".

As I said, the maesters are quite dogmatic in their beliefs about dragonriders and dragons existing before Valyria, so much they dismiss each and any of the archeological finds to the contrary, throw up their arms and sigh "It doesn't fit. So dunno." The answer is so obvious. But the answer is one of the Citadel's taboo.

  • The Black Stone at Battle Isle
  • The Five Forts
  • Nagga's bones and a black stone sea stone chair that went missing
  • mariners: Ironborn, Hightowers, Daynes, with the first two having indications of originating from slavers
  • iron forging in the bronze age of the FM (Ironborn and Daynes)

There's your conquest efforts by pre-Valyarian dragonlords.

Yes, I know BE and Leng and K'dath, etc are nods at Lovecraft. It's still incorporated in the world building. Church of Starry Wisdom and Starry Sept at Oldtown for example. Nods at lovecraft do not negate theorizing.

Just my 2ç

Edited by sweetsunray
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On 2/3/2023 at 12:39 PM, Sandy Clegg said:

Longclaw is Valyrian steel, but I'm not. The Halfhand could have killed me as easy as you swat a bug."

Sam handed back the sword. "When I try to swat a bug, it always flies away. All I do is slap my arm. It stings."

 - AFFC, Samwell I

Well, it certainly seems to fit with another passage that seems to relate to the Hammer of the Waters:

"It was the Grey King who brought fire to the earth by taunting the Storm God until he lashed down with a thunderbolt, setting a tree ablaze. The Grey King also taught men to weave nets and sails and carved the first longship from the hard pale wood of Ygg, a demon tree who fed on human flesh." --TWOIAF, The Iron Islands

What that actually means, who knows, but the general notion of a defensive attack turned self-harming is something I've been thinking about.

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/3/2023 at 6:43 PM, Sandy Clegg said:

I'm just curious as to their connection, especially as after reading all @LmL's mythical astronomy theories, the one thing that struck me as odd was that a comet could strike the moon, yet somehow survive to return millennia later. If the Red Wanderer planet were the source of these comets, perhaps they are not comets after all but fragments of the planet, which is damaged somehow. 

On 2/4/2023 at 3:03 AM, Sandy Clegg said:

Indeed. But isn't it possible for the Red Wanderer to be not wholly intact? Not destroyed, simply 'torn'? 

On 2/4/2023 at 3:21 AM, sweetsunray said:

The impact would put the remainder in a different path and alter its mass, and then Keppler's law would cause it to have the remainder have a different path, and the torn part would become the red wanderer's moon/satellite (aka what happened with earth and the moon). So, no I don't think anything that drastic occurred with the red wanderer, not with George pointing out how regularly cyclic it is and hinting it was since the Great Empire of the Dawn.

Mars was not impacted, it is launching comets.  Which can explain the multiple appearances of the Red Comet, they are like the Volcryn being shot out into space.

In the book Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology  the author mentioned that monks in the 1200s believed that Mars was origin of comets.  And indeed, in Old Norse Mars is called the Bloody Star, and the Red Comet is called the Bleeding Star.  On page 95 of Comets, she mentions other ancient astronomers who believed comets were launched from the planets.

 

It was actually a theory for a long time that comets were launched out of supervolcanoes on Jupiter and Saturn.

Hevelius the 15th century astronomer was famous for this theory.  His main work, Cometographia shows a depiction of a comet being launched from Saturn on the first page.  And his theory is mentioned in several mass market books about comets, like Carl Sagan's Comet--which is probably the most popular comet reference book. 

The 17th century French mathematician Joseph Lagrange believed that comets were shot out of volcanoes on Jupiter and Saturn. 

Astronomer Richard A. Proctor believed the same, he argued in 1884 in the North American Review, that all of the planets were capable of one time of ejecting material from a volcano with enough velocity to escape the planet's gravity and become a comet--but that the inner planets have since cooled enough that they can no longer do so, but that Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun still retain this capacity.  He theorized that the Great Red Spot on Jupiter was a supervolcano that regularly launching comets into space.

The 19th century British astronomer Patrick Moore discussed the theory in his book Guide to Comets.   This theory is also covered in The New York Times Guide to the Return of Halley's Comet

Lastly, the soviet astronomer S.K. Vsekhsviatskii notoriously believed the same, and Carl Sagan famously had a feud with him and spends a fair amount of time calling him a pseudoscientist and crackpot in his books, I think it was Broca's Brain.

 

The idea that the Great Red Spot was a supervolcano, I think may have inspired H.G. Wells for War of the Worlds, where the Martians build a gigantic cannon and shoot aliens in capsules to Earth that are called falling stars and meteors.  And in that story Mars is red because it is completely covered in red foliage. 

 

In ASoIaF, Mars is called the Smith, and Clark Ashton Smith built on H.G, Wells' idea with his The Seedling of Mars, where Mars is covered by one gigantic telepathic plant / kraken, and Mars' canals are its arms, with its central hub/brain is like Olympus Mons, which is a giant God's Eye that watches Earth.  It launches its seeds to Earth as Red Comets, to spread itself to Earth and take over our planet with its Seedlings.  [This idea is repeated in his story Vulthoom--and the Red Comet is the subject of his The Beast of Averoigne, where the Red Comet is Satan]

 

Valyria was a supervolcano, and the Red Comet is central to their prophecy of the Prince who was Promised  [tairngaire means "the Promised One, the messiah"]

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  • 3 months later...
On 2/4/2023 at 10:15 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

What that actually means, who knows, but the general notion of a defensive attack turned self-harming is something I've been thinking about.

Yeah, the fog of history in ASOIAF makes it very hard to attribute direct cause & effect. Being able to mess with elemental powers (as the COTF may have been able to do) doesn't guarantee it can be done with any accuracy.  it's the 'sword without a hilt' motif again.

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