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What do you think the magical reveals of the story will be?


Phylum of Alexandria

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Five books in, and the Others mostly remain a mystery. 

We see dragons quite a bit, but the origin of dragons, not to mention all of Asshai, remains a mystery. 

So far the most in-story magical reveals have come from the greenseers in their weirwoods, and yet the green men on the Isle of Faces--first mentioned in Cat 1 of AGOT--remain a mystery.

Obviously part of the reason why GRRM doesn't reveal everything at once is because the sense of the unknown is good for the story. Jaws being an enormous shark wasn't all that complicated, but the film's sense of suspense was created via the extended tease of its central threat eventually leading to a full on-screen reveal later in the film.

But suspense aside, what do you think the purpose of hiding this information in ASOIAF is? GRRM keeping his icy "Jaws" a tantalizing unknown is one thing...but why make dragons and Asshai a secret, and the green men?

What do you think those magical reveals will be, and what will they bring to the story and its themes?

1. What will we find in The Heart of Winter?

2. How did Asshai get like it did? What does it mean for the origin of dragons? And what does that mean for the main story?

3. What about those green men keeping their silent watch on the Isle of Faces?

(I have my own theories, but am wondering what others think)

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Heart of Winter is like the capital of the Others. I think Bran will make it there and establish himself. He’s the Dark Lord of the Far North and the Enemy of the Light.

Asshai was where the battle between light and dark took place. Light won but the city is contaminated with dark radiation.

 

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I do not think we will see the Heart of Winter or Asshai.  They represent mythic sources of evil.  But in the end, the battle between good and evil will play out in the hearts of the characters.

In the end it will be low-key revealed that Rh'llor and the Great Other are on the same team, and are two different faces of the many-faced god of death, whose goal is the extinction of humanity.   I say "low key" because of course these entities will not appear in any literal sense, except maybe in ambiguous dreams and visions.  Rather the main characters will make the moral choice to reject the dualistic death cults that they represent.

Actual magical reveals will be on a smaller scale.  More dragons will appear.  More red zombies will be made.  More human sacrifice will be done.  Stone dragons will be awakened by blood magic.  Euron will ride the sulpherous red wind at great speed.  Much death will result before the tide turns. 

I want to see hordes of squishers rise from the sea, and krakens pulling down ships.  But I don't know if I dare hope. 

On a more positive note, Aeron Damphair will survive drowning again, the Elder Brother will heal Sandor's face, and a True Knight will slay a dragon. 

I honestly have no theory of what we will learn on the Isle of Faces.

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I'll pick:  what did Moqorro do to Victarion's hand?  

Quote

 

A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VII

Benerro's high voice carried well. Tall and thin, he had a drawn face and skin white as milk. Flames had been tattooed across his cheeks and chin and shaven head to make a bright red mask that crackled about his eyes and coiled down and around his lipless mouth. "Is that a slave tattoo?" asked Tyrion.

The knight nodded. "The red temple buys them as children and makes them priests or temple prostitutes or warriors. Look there." He pointed at the steps, where a line of men in ornate armor and orange cloaks stood before the temple's doors, clasping spears with points like writhing flames. "The Fiery Hand. The Lord of Light's sacred soldiers, defenders of the temple."

Fire knights. "And how many fingers does this hand have, pray?"

"One thousand. Never more, and never less. A new flame is kindled for every one that gutters out."

 

Has Victarion been recruited to the Fiery Hand without knowing it?  What does it mean to gutter out?  

I'm guessing Victarion has been kindled/has been made into kindling; and the fiery hand doesn't stop at his elbow.  So his glorious future isn't what he thinks it is.

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I would like to know if Aegon/YG has any Targ power at all.  I'm in the majority thinking he is a Blackfyre.  But that's still a sort of Targ, right?  He should have some magic in his veins, right?  I expect he will have all the trappings of a Targ prince, but will he have the magic?  Will Blackfyre work for him as Longclaw and Oathkeeper work for Jon and Brienne?  Is he fire resistant?  Can he command a dragon?  I don't know that he will get the opportunity, but I would sure like to see it. 

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5 hours ago, Gilbert Green said:

I do not think we will see the Heart of Winter or Asshai.  They represent mythic sources of evil.  But in the end, the battle between good and evil will play out in the hearts of the characters.

I was disappointed when GRRM said that we would only see Asshai in flashback or memory, if at all. And if his "if at all" does turn out to be not at all, then I'll be very disappointed.

My money's on Asshai showing up in some form or other, but who knows where GRRM's gardening will take him.

 

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25 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

I would like to know if Aegon/YG has any Targ power at all.  I'm in the majority thinking he is a Blackfyre.  But that's still a sort of Targ, right?  He should have some magic in his veins, right?  I expect he will have all the trappings of a Targ prince, but will he have the magic?  Will Blackfyre work for him as Longclaw and Oathkeeper work for Jon and Brienne?  Is he fire resistant?  Can he command a dragon?  I don't know that he will get the opportunity, but I would sure like to see it. 

All of the "Dance of the Dragons" backstory does seem to suggest that some sort of dragon war will take place in the story proper, right?

I know that the Targaryen history now has a life of its own with the various spin-off books, but I imagine that it started as coloring to accent things to come in the main story of ASOIAF. Maybe such a war doesn't require that Aegon take a dragon, but it would be a lot more compelling if he did!

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1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

All of the "Dance of the Dragons" backstory does seem to suggest that some sort of dragon war will take place in the story proper, right?

I know that the Targaryen history now has a life of its own with the various spin-off books, but I imagine that it started as coloring to accent things to come in the main story of ASOIAF. Maybe such a war doesn't require that Aegon take a dragon, but it would be a lot more compelling if he did!

You know, a normal person probably would think that, but it has never really resonated with me.  I think that is because there are only 3 dragons at play.  My interest here is in purity of bloodlines vs claim as seen through someone like Varys' eyes.  Blackfyres haven't demonstrated any real magic that I am aware of but there hasn't been much real fire magic bouncing around much in the past 150 years or so either.  I can see Martin going with simple dragons as people here and that really is where Aegon is interesting.  Is he anyone at all?  Even a Blackfyre would be a potentially cool thing to verify with this author.  If Aegon gets all super power fightery with Blackfyre in hand his potential addition to the sword wielders club will be very interesting.  

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Dragon bonding comes at the cost of sacrificing children's lives of the same blood as riders. A child's soul enters into a dragon and that allows humans with a blood relation to the child to possibly bond with the dragon. The blood bond persists through generations of humans and dragons, so sacrifices are not required every time, but the blood bond will in time weaken and need to be renewed.

The souls are the source of dragon's flame.

Dragon blooded families can, did and do second life dragons.

Drogo's soul is within Drogon, Drogon is Drogo's second life. Rhaego's soul is also within Drogon. More than one soul can be within one entity (Hodor+Bran within Hodor's head/body for example), including dragons.

The three heads of the dragon prophesy will come to pass, the three heads are Drogo, Rhaego and Dany. Dany will die and her soul will join with the her love and child inside the dragon and that is what the three headed dragon refers to, it's significant because with Dany's soul joining her soul mates the dragon will change, it will become extremely large and powerful and breathe fire extremely hot, and it will be the dragon that will defeat the Others and end the Long Night.

The rules aren't really hard and fast rules, it's magic, and because Dany is Dany when she becomes the dragon she's going to allow everyone who died fighting for her a second life within the dragon with her. Drogo, Rhaego and she are still it's head, as in they'll control it mostly, but the rest will get a free ride in the afterlife.

Being able to skin change and second life species and for characteristics to be brought back and cross over, coupled with the possibilities of interbreeding, as magic in this world allows, creates endless fucked up possibilities. Asshai is GRRM accounting for these possibilities, this is where they (blood magic practitioners, seemingly in small groups or out for themselves) experimented with what beasts they could create and become. There's no children because their sacrifice is part of the experimenting process. Asshai is also somewhere to store Shiera/Quaithe while she learns this gear. Seems like things weren't really progressing so well on Asshai as far as producing beasts of use/power or Dany's dragons wouldn't be of so much interest to Quaithe.

 

Greyscale was/is a shaping tool for the process of creating beasts. It would have worked something like this;

- some living thing gets (is purposely given) greyscale,

- it is allowed to turn completely to stone in its from

- A desired end product is created by stone working, melting it down and reshaping it, chiselling(?), combining different elements from different species, etc

- Through blood magic a human (or humans) is sacrificed and an attempt made to send their soul into the end stone product to bring it to life.

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15 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

What do you think those magical reveals will be, and what will they bring to the story and its themes?

1. What will we find in The Heart of Winter?

2. How did Asshai get like it did? What does it mean for the origin of dragons? And what does that mean for the main story?

3. What about those green men keeping their silent watch on the Isle of Faces?

I was honestly a little surprised by your list of three. The current story can't be finished without revealing the mystery of the Others, but it could be finished without ever going to the Heart of Winter. The current story can't be finished without revealing more about greenseeing and the Children of the Forest, but it could be finished without ever going to the Isle of Faces or meeting the green men. Asshai isn't even tangentially related to any necessary reveal. It would be fun to find out more about your three, but I think the story could easily be completed without revealing anything more about those.

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9 hours ago, Groo said:

I was honestly a little surprised by your list of three. The current story can't be finished without revealing the mystery of the Others, but it could be finished without ever going to the Heart of Winter. The current story can't be finished without revealing more about greenseeing and the Children of the Forest, but it could be finished without ever going to the Isle of Faces or meeting the green men. Asshai isn't even tangentially related to any necessary reveal. It would be fun to find out more about your three, but I think the story could easily be completed without revealing anything more about those.

I guess that's technically true, though it seems strange to me to build up a place like the Isle of Faces and then not reveal what's there. This is not some remote place in an uninhabitable terrain like the Heart of Winter. It's in the Riverlands, right by Harrenhall!

It's a place of mystery, and seeming importance to the deeper magical plot, and yet it's in close vicinity to the central action of most of the story. And we know it's accessible to some people, as Howland Reed visited there before the tourney of Harrenhall. So why write all of that with not even a peek into what there? If not via a physical visit to the island, then at least a psychic one from a weirwood.

As for the green men, I guess if the only mention of them had been the brief one in Catelyn I AGOT, then it could be dismissed as some unimportant world building detail, some order of men tasked with protecting the weirwoods there. End of story.

But the mention of them in TWOIAF mirrors the description of the legendary Garth Greenhand (green skin, possibly having antlers, etc), complete with the maester poo-pooing it all as mere storytelling exaggeration. All the more reason to assume that the weirder descriptions actually have some merit!

So here's a question: given that we already have the CotF as our magical nature servants of the weirwoods, what's the point of having a completely different race of magical nature men there? Especially if they never actually factor into the story proper? Such set up without any payoff would be pretty shoddy writing in my opinion. But I think the green men will actually factor into the story, and GRRM is cagey about showing these various locations for a reason.

As for Asshai, I concede that GRRM thought early on in his writing that the region would play a more prominent part in the story proper, but as the story grew he decided that it will only be seen via memory or dream, if at all. But even if a character never visits there physically, he seeded it as an important place for a reason. It's Ground Zero for the cataclysm that led to the Long Night. It's apparently the birthplace of dragons. 

Given that the series starts out with the framing conceit of seasons out of balance, and the threat of a new Long Night looms over the entire story, the mechanisms behind the first Long Night seem pretty important. Especially because TWOIAF suggests that the world once had normal seasons, and something threw them out of balance. 

I don't think the origin of dragons needed to be something secret on the face of it, but the story that GRRM is writing is in fact keeping their origin a mystery. Given that Quaithe has been telling Dany to go to Asshai since Book 2, and that Asshai seems to be the true birthplace of dragons despite the official Valyrian history saying otherwise, it would be shoddy writing if we never learned anything about Asshai that could relate to Dany or dragonriding.

As for the heart of winter, I agree, it's not on the face of it a place we necessarily need to see in order to better understand the Others. I just happen to think that there's something there that would need to be destroyed in order to end the threat of the Others. LmL has noted the descriptive similarities in the books between the Others and the Kingsguard. I think that's because they are guardians of something, keeping a silent watch, not unlike those green men on the Isle of Faces. 

 

 

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