How will the Wall fall?

[chrisdaw]

I am sure that the wall forms the ice dragon and it is Stannis's second life.

I think Stannis and/or Shireen's soul gets stuck in the wall, maybe Stannis as his shadow self gets stuck in there, maybe his human self dies while he's in shadow mode. The wall will fall, maybe this brings it down or maybe the next event I describe below does, maybe it's all the one thing or the wall falls then the ice dragon comes into being as two separate events, I am not sure, but the soul(s) of Stannis/Shireen will animate the ice of the wall and form the ice dragon.

Jon will impregnate Dany at the wall, against it probably, and it will either play a role in the process of the wall falling (and/or ice dragon forming) or it will simply happen concurrently. Jon will view it as his fault, that the wall fell because the Night's Watch, him specifically, forsook the vow, and he will struggle under the weight of that shame.

That's what this passage below is about, Jon is the sun, and this is the shameful deed no-one will know about.

Quote

In the Jade Compendium, Colloquo Votar recounts a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

To get Jon to impregnate her Dany will be glamoured as Ygritte, so Ygritte will in a way have her victory, the pay off for this moderately forced scene and her feelings.

Quote

 

"I hate this Wall," she said in a low angry voice. "Can you feel how cold it is?"

"It's made of ice," Jon pointed out.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. This wall is made o' blood."

. . .

"Why are you crying, then?"

"Not for fear!" She kicked savagely at the ice beneath her with a heel, chopping out a chunk. "I'm crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!"

 

[Curled Finger]

This is a good question @kissdbyfire.Without a Lord God King Other I don't see The Others having a use for a dragon.  So big hole is out in my book.  Melting sounds like it would take too long, I mean, it was weeping in the prologue of AGOT for crying out loud.  It's definitely got something to do with the wards more than the structure, I think anyway, so a way through.   With all those castles inhabited now it is possible there are folks unprepared or under populated to stave off an attack.  It could happen in a quieter way like that I suppose.    Though I would expect some passage collapsing during the restoration of the Nightfort that would allow a real way through no one would know or remember.   Something sneaky that wouldn't necessarily require a great crumbling or collapse.  

A big enough company of dead creatures could  just climb over and wear away at the surfaces.  You get it thin enough say 150 feet up and half of it falls off say between Sentinel Stand and Grey Guard that would be a nice chunk out of the way.  

Then again, there are volcanoes up there.  We don't know there isn't a volcano under the Wall somewhere.   That is one way to get rid of the debris right quick.  Maybe score some dragon glass while they're at it.  After it all cools down of course.   

[U. B. Cool]

10 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Pretty straightforward: how do you think the Wall comes down? Full disclosure, I’m not convinced it will happen. But above all else, I don’t see how can it happen w/o killing everyone within a certain radius and also w/o its fall having far-reaching consequences. And I’m not talking about the magic or the Others coming south or whatever, but just that amount of ice/water + the physical force of it all. And it can’t just melt slowly or something b/c that would be a drag in terms of storytelling. I find it easier to depict a metaphorical fall, where the magic within it fails than a literal fall of a 700ft high 300mi long ice cube. 

Not literally but the defense will collapse.  Lord Commander Jon Snow began the political avalanche that will be the death of the Night Watch.  His attempts to rescue Arya broke the Order.  The black brothers and the wildlings will fight each other.  The Order will lose many of its best soldiers and leaders. 

[Many-Faced Votary]

1 hour ago, U. B. Cool said:

Not literally but the defense will collapse.  Lord Commander Jon Snow began the political avalanche that will be the death of the Night Watch.  His attempts to rescue Arya broke the Order.  The black brothers and the wildlings will fight each other.  The Order will lose many of its best soldiers and leaders. 

The Night's Watch was already doomed when they lost honorable Janos Slynt, so we should have been prepared for this.

[LynnS]

Will the seasons return to normal balance when the Wall is destroyed?

[kissdbyfire]

11 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

All that needs to fall really is the magical ward. Then Others can basically walk through the ice wall, as well as vaporize it.

The magic failing thus allowing the Others to pass is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. But that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make: wouldn’t that be hugely anticlimactic for all those who have been expecting and talking about the Wall literally falling, as in crumbling down? Also, not sure what you mean by the Wall being “vaporised”? Like, it’s there and then poof, it’s gone? Because that would also be anticlimactic for the reasons already stated. 
The main thing I’m thinking about here is how will Martin handle the event while managing expectations readers have and have had for a long time now of a spectacularly apocalyptic event, because it would be so easy for the whole thing to be a huge anticlimactic ‘meh’.

9 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

I am sure that the wall forms the ice dragon and it is Stannis's second life.

As in, the massive ice cube the Wall is transforms into an ice dragon?

9 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

<snip>

Jon will impregnate Dany at the wall, against it probably, and it will either play a role in the process of the wall falling (and/or ice dragon forming)

I don’t get it… Jon and Dany shagging against the Wall - and let me say, if I’m understanding this correctly, someone may suffer from frostbite on their bum - and this will trap Stannis’s soul in the Wall?

9 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

or it will simply happen concurrently. Jon will view it as his fault, that the wall fell because the Night's Watch, him specifically, forsook the vow, and he will struggle under the weight of that shame.

Which vow? 

9 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

<snip>

To get Jon to impregnate her Dany will be glamoured as Ygritte, so Ygritte will in a way have her victory, the pay off for this moderately forced scene and her feelings.

How will Dany glamor herself? 

 

@Curled Finger, I agree the wards failing is the most likely way of allowing the Others to come south. I’m curious though, what makes you think there are volcanoes near the Wall? This is interesting!

 

3 hours ago, Many-Faced Votary said:

The Night's Watch was already doomed when they lost honorable Janos Slynt, so we should have been prepared for this.

Poor Janos Slynt, such a noble and heroic man, taken from the world much too soon! /s
I can’t with this level of mental idiocy in some arguments.

21 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Will the seasons return to normal balance when the Wall is destroyed?

Good question. Another interesting question is, do we have any info on seasons being normal before the Wall was built? 

I remember @Capon Breath proposed many years ago that the Wall had been built to hold back the worst of winter itself, which is an interesting idea. 

[Curled Finger]

As usual I don't know anything at all, but it seems to me that the region is littered with geothermic possibility.  Hot Springs in Winterfell, the Wall weeps in places even when it's cold then the whole disaster in Hardhome in the past.   

Seven hells, maybe the Wall weeps thin where the 79 sentinels are stowed and the Others get to them.  

[Evolett]

4 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Seven hells, maybe the Wall weeps thin where the 79 sentinels are stowed and the Others get to them.  

What role might the 79 sentinels play, if any? I imagine when thawed they'll be in pretty good shape. Fresh and ready to go. Since they are sentinels, perhaps they are so infused with Wall's warding magic by now that if raised from death, they will defy being enslaved by the Others. In that case, they become Coldhands type brothers who will be sorely needed to help man the under defended Wall. 

[Curled Finger]

1 minute ago, Evolett said:

What role might the 79 sentinels play, if any? I imagine when thawed they'll be in pretty good shape. Fresh and ready to go. Since they are sentinels, perhaps they are so infused with Wall's warding magic by now that if raised from death, they will defy being enslaved by the Others. In that case, they become Coldhands type brothers who will be sorely needed to help man the under defended Wall. 

See now, that's positive thinking.  Free the Sentinels!

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I remember @Capon Breath proposed many years ago that the Wall had been built to hold back the worst of winter itself, which is an interesting idea. 

Geez, I keep forgetting about this.  There was no all when the WWs came the first time.  I've also wondered about the phrase "Watchers on the Walls" (plural).  I suppose that means the Wall itself is both a physical and magical wall; hence the use of the plural form.  So the horn likely doesn't bring down the physical Wall.

But what does it mean to wake giants from the earth?  Is that what happenned when Joramun blew the horn the first time? The horn that wakes the sleepers?  Jon wonders if blowing it a second time will put them back to sleep;

Quote

 

A Storm of Swords - Jon II

In Old Nan's stories, giants were outsized men who lived in colossal castles, fought with huge swords, and walked about in boots a boy could hide in. These were something else, more bearlike than human, and as wooly as the mammoths they rode. Seated, it was hard to say how big they truly were. Ten feet tall maybe, or twelve, Jon thought. Maybe fourteen, but no taller. Their sloping chests might have passed for those of men, but their arms hung down too far, and their lower torsos looked half again as wide as their upper. Their legs were shorter than their arms, but very thick, and they wore no boots at all; their feet were broad splayed things, hard and horny and black. Neckless, their huge heavy heads thrust forward from between their shoulder blades, and their faces were squashed and brutal. Rats' eyes no larger than beads were almost lost within folds of horny flesh, but they snuffled constantly, smelling as much as they saw.

They're not wearing skins, Jon realized. That's hair. Shaggy pelts covered their bodies, thick below the waist, sparser above. The stink that came off them was choking, but perhaps that was the mammoths. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth. He looked for great swords ten feet long, but saw only clubs. Most were just the limbs of dead trees, some still trailing shattered branches. A few had stone balls lashed to the ends to make colossal mauls. The song never says if the horn can put them back to sleep.

 

I doubt that the song is referring to actual giants and I wonder if the horn was deliberately broken to stop it from being winded again thus putting the giants/sleepers/dreamers? back to sleep.   Are they keeping the wards in place?

[Lord Varys]

Guys, this question is already settled. We know that there is a thing called the Horn of Joramun or the Horn of Winter, and we also know what it does. It wakes the giants in the earth which is a metaphor for (causing) earthquakes. Even the GoT script originally had the Lich King touch the earth north of the Wall, causing a massive earthquake breaching the Wall rather than the silly ice dragon nonsense they ended up doing - which likely was the last remnant of George's Horn of Joramun plot.

This horn isn't some kind of magical macguffin that works wherever you blow it. Presumably, it causes only earthquakes within the radius its magic affects - kind of like, presumably, Dragonbinder also doesn't affect every dragon in the world but merely whatever dragon actually hears its sound.

Thus we would assume that only the section of the Wall within the radius of the sound of the Horn of Joramun will be affected by the subsequent earthquake ... meaning most definitely not the entire Wall, but merely a section of a couple of miles.

The Wall won't be coming tumbling down all over the place, it will be merely breached. There will be a large enough crack for the Others and wights to pass through. Of course, the morons on that section of the Wall and presumably also those living in the castle beneath the point where the crack will form will all die - either by being crushed by tumbling blocs of ice or simply by the structures they live in collapsing due to the earthquake.

If this happens at Castle Black then the people there will mostly die. If it happens somewhere else and there are people living there they will die.

We don't know where it will happen, so there is no reason to assume this is going to be a particularly problematic plot.

But even if the entire Wall were to collapse this wouldn't be a particularly hard plot. George could go with everybody dying up there if he so wished - but he could just as well have people figure out what the Others or whoever else is going to blow the horn in advance so there will be enough time for an evacuation. Granted, now that all the castles along the Wall will be manned this wouldn't be easy ... but as I said, a collapse of the entire Wall makes no sense.

Also, I think, all this speculation or fantasy about the Wall and its magical ward being two different things make little sense to me. The Wall's magic isn't some kind of super thing that keeps the Others out. If it were, there wouldn't have been a need to build it ever higher. They built it as high as they did because they know - or once knew - that the Others, the ice spiders, and their wights can climb the Wall. The magic is not going to stop them from doing that. Which is why it must be high to make almost impossible for them to get on the other side that way.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

I expect it will be spectacular. Perhaps DOS' intro's POV will be some random wildlings orphaned from Mance's group who have no idea about what's going on but they're near the wall and can describe it's fall to us as they're buried.

This gun's been hanging on the wall for thousands of pages now, so when it goes off it had better be quite the bang. I wanna hear Bob Dylan in the background mumbling 'then the wall came down.... all the way to hell..." I wanna hear Roger Wate- forget that actually. I wanna hear John Cougar Mellancamp rasp 'when the walls come crumbling down' and David Bowie and Steve Earle and Black Sabbath. Now I know the author isn't going to break any of this out, but I want the spectacle and tumult to rise to the level of cacophony that all of that music at once would suggest.

If we hadn't already been told that spring will be but a dream, I would have expected that we'd see an immediate change in the weather - maybe if the Wall comes down late in the story something like this could still happen, but the only way it would fall that late would be if it were deliberately taken down by the victors because they knew it was no longer needed. I don't think that's the way it will go, it's just not as fun as it falling at a point when all of Westeros is focused on Kingslanding or the south in general.  

[Evolett]

If the Wall is to ice as the Fourteen Flames were to fire, we can expect a massive catastrophe if it actually comes down all at once. Tons and tons of ice breaking up and crashing to earth should generate enough force to cause the surrounding earth to quake and break up as well. Fast melting ice would quickly form torrents of water, enough to half drown the North at least. Speaking of drowning, I wonder whether the Fourteen Flames still belch fire or were drowned after the seas came rushing in to wash over Old Valyria? 

I also think a breach will be quite sufficient. 

4 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

See now, that's positive thinking.  Free the Sentinels!

I'm serious . Those oathbreakers would be GRRM's nod at Tolkien's Dead Men of Dunharrow.

 

[Moiraine Sedai]

Jon already caused the cracks on the wall.  He betrayed his duties for love. His love for Arya compromised him. He was not supposed to meddle in the political affairs of the Boltons. 

[Curled Finger]

6 minutes ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Jon already caused the cracks on the wall.  He betrayed his duties for love. His love for Arya compromised him. He was not supposed to meddle in the political affairs of the Boltons. 

I know you are not a Jon fan so that's not where I mean to go with the question.  Do you mean to take the position that the Wall and Watch are interchangeable entities?  I've been wondering this throughout the topic.  Both would be magical in their way dependent upon each other for protection in the end.  The Watch has failed its purpose thereby weakening the Wall?  

[kissdbyfire]

2 hours ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

I expect it will be spectacular. Perhaps DOS' intro's POV will be some random wildlings orphaned from Mance's group who have no idea about what's going on but they're near the wall and can describe it's fall to us as they're buried.

This gun's been hanging on the wall for thousands of pages now, so when it goes off it had better be quite the bang. I wanna hear Bob Dylan in the background mumbling 'then the wall came down.... all the way to hell..." I wanna hear Roger Wate- forget that actually. I wanna hear John Cougar Mellancamp rasp 'when the walls come crumbling down' and David Bowie and Steve Earle and Black Sabbath. Now I know the author isn't going to break any of this out, but I want the spectacle and tumult to rise to the level of cacophony that all of that music at once would suggest.

If we hadn't already been told that spring will be but a dream, I would have expected that we'd see an immediate change in the weather - maybe if the Wall comes down late in the story something like this could still happen, but the only way it would fall that late would be if it were deliberately taken down by the victors because they knew it was no longer needed. I don't think that's the way it will go, it's just not as fun as it falling at a point when all of Westeros is focused on Kingslanding or the south in general.  

That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about… it has to be spectacularly catastrophic or it will be underwhelming and anticlimactic. But for it to be spectacularly catastrophic, the consequences must be immense or it won’t be believable. 
And love the playlist btw, even if I missed seeing The Clash in it. In my head canon
I Fought the Law is the tune for Bowen’s demise. But any playlist w/ Bowie and Dylan is great in my book.

 

[kissdbyfire]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

Geez, I keep forgetting about this.  There was no all when the WWs came the first time.  I've also wondered about the phrase "Watchers on the Walls" (plural).  I suppose that means the Wall itself is both a physical and magical wall; hence the use of the plural form.  So the horn likely doesn't bring down the physical Wall.

But what does it mean to wake giants from the earth?  Is that what happenned when Joramun blew the horn the first time? The horn that wakes the sleepers?  Jon wonders if blowing it a second time will put them back to sleep;

I doubt that the song is referring to actual giants and I wonder if the horn was deliberately broken to stop it from being winded again thus putting the giants/sleepers/dreamers? back to sleep.   Are they keeping the wards in place?

Yeah, all good questions. And there was no Wall during the LN, but what I’d like to know is whether seasons were normal before the LN/building of the Wall or not. 

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

25 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I Fought the Law is the tune for Bowen’s demise. But any playlist w/ Bowie and Dylan is great in my book.

I was kind of focusing on Wall songs but will happily include the Clash for Marsh's fall. That should be a climactic event as well!

[kissdbyfire]

4 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

I was kind of focusing on Wall songs but will happily include the Clash for Marsh's fall. That should be a climactic event as well!

Methinks we need a musical thread, certain tunes for certain events, past and future. 

[Many-Faced Votary]

9 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Good question. Another interesting question is, do we have any info on seasons being normal before the Wall was built? 

The description of the first book, presumably approved by Mr. Martin himself, says this:

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance.

There was also a direct indication that there is a magical explanation for the irregular seasons, and so presumably there was a time before seasons became irregular: SSM.

The likeliest explanation based on what details we have is that the Others were in some way involved in throwing the seasons out of balance.