The House of the Wyrm?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Maester Yandel’s begins his work The World of Ice and Fire stating with a certainty that people and culture were hella primitive in the Dawn Age:

“There are none who can say with certain knowledge when the world began, yet this has not stopped many maesters and learned men from seeking the answer. Is it forty thousand years old, as some hold, or perhaps a number as large as five hundred thousand—or even more? It is not written in any book that we know, for in the first age of the world, the Dawn Age, men were not lettered. We can be certain that the world was far more primitive, however—a barbarous place of tribes living directly from the land with no knowledge of the working of metal or the taming of beasts.”

He states that no true civilizations existed so early on:

“What little is known to us of those days is contained in the oldest of texts: the tales written down by the Andals, by the Valyrians, and by the Ghiscari, and even by those distant people of fabled Asshai. Yet however ancient those lettered races, they were not even children during the Dawn Age. So what truths their tales contain are difficult to find, like seeds among chaff.”

And he makes it clear that no humans were living in Westeros at this time:

“What can most accurately be told about the Dawn Age? The eastern lands were awash with many peoples—uncivilized, as all the world was uncivilized, but numerous. But on Westeros, from the Lands of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea, only two peoples existed: the children of the forest and the race of creatures known as the giants.”

A bit later, he recounts the well-known history of the migration of the First Men into Westeros via the Arm of Dorne.

But before he gets to that passage, still in the Dawn Age section, he drops this interesting little nugget before dismissing it out of hand:

“A possibility arises for a third race to have inhabited the Seven Kingdoms in the Dawn Age, but it is so speculative that it need only be dealt with briefly. Among the ironborn, it is said that the first of the First Men to come to the Iron Isles found the famous Seastone Chair on Old Wyk, but that the isles were uninhabited. If true, the nature and origins of the chair's makers are a mystery. Maester Kirth in his collection of ironborn legends, Songs the Drowned Men Sing, has suggested that the chair was left by visitors from across the Sunset Sea, but there is no evidence for this, only speculation.”

A mysterious third race. Squishers? Mayhaps. But, it seems like it could also be humans, given this passage in the Old Town chapter:

“The reasons for the abandonment of the fortress and the fate of its builders, whoever they might have been, are likewise lost to us, but at some point we know that Battle Isle and its great stronghold came into the possession of the ancestors of House Hightower. Were they First Men, as most scholars believe today? Or did they mayhaps descend from the seafarers and traders who had settled at the top of Whispering Sound in earlier epochs, the men who came before the First Men? We cannot know.”

***

The men who came before the first men? Tell me more!

Obviously, plenty of other commenters have stumbled upon these tantalizing details, along with many others, that hint at a race of humans in Westeros who preceded the First Men. And what’s especially intriguing about this mysterious race of men is that they seem much more technologically and magically advanced than the First Men and even the Andals were.

There’s the aforementioned base of the High Tower, apparently made from fused black stone, which is thought to only be fused using dragonfire.

“Even more enigmatic to scholars and historians is the great square fortress of black stone that dominates that isle. For most of recorded history, this monumental edifice has served as the foundation and lowest level of the Hightower, yet we know for a certainty that it predates the upper levels of the tower by thousands of years.

Who built it? When? Why? Most maesters accept the common wisdom that declares it to be of Valyrian construction, for its massive walls and labyrinthine interiors are all of solid rock, with no hint of joins or mortar, no chisel marks of any kind, a type of construction that is seen elsewhere, most notably in the dragonroads of the Freehold of Valyria, and the Black Walls that protect the heart of Old Volantis. The dragonlords of Valryia, as is well-known, possessed the art of turning stone to liquid with dragonflame, shaping it as they would, then fusing it harder than iron, steel, or granite.

If indeed this first fortress is Valyrian, it suggests that the dragonlords came to Westeros thousands of years before they carved out their outpost on Dragonstone, long before the coming of the Andals, or even the First Men. If so, did they come seeking trade? Were they slavers, mayhaps seeking after giants? Did they seek to learn the magic of the children of the forest, with their greenseers and their weirwoods? Or was there some darker purpose?”

So thousands of years before Bran the Builder helped to build the stone tower that Westerosi see in the present day, there were dragonlords capable of this magical, artisanal feat? Yandel continues:

“More troubling, and more worthy of consideration, are the arguments put forth by those who claim that the first fortress is not Valyrian at all.

The fused black stone of which it is made suggests Valyria, but the plain, unadorned style of architecture does not, for the dragonlords loved little more than twisting stone into strange, fanciful, and ornate shapes. Within, the narrow, twisting, windowless passages strike many as being tunnels rather than halls; it is very easy to get lost amongst their turnings. Mayhaps this is no more than a defensive measure designed to confound attackers, but it too is singularly un-Valyrian. The labyrinthine nature of its interior architecture has led Archmaester Quillion to suggest that the fortress might have been the work of the mazemakers, a mysterious people who left remnants of their vanished civilization upon Lorath in the Shivering Sea. The notion is intriguing but raises more questions than it answers.

An even more fanciful possibility was put forth a century ago by Maester Theron. Born a bastard on the Iron Islands, Theron noted a certain likeness between the black stone of the ancient fortress and that of the Seastone Chair, the high seat of House Greyjoy of Pyke, whose origins are similarly ancient and mysterious. Theron's rather inchoate manuscript Strange Stone postulates that both fortress and seat might be the work of a queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women. These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.”

So, while Squishers are raised as a possibility, Maester Theron conflates fused black stone with oily black stone. Perhaps they are related in some indirect way (i.e., tied to some forgotten human people who came to Westeros), but they don’t seem to be the same substance. The fort is fused black stone. The Seastone Chair is oily black stone. One requires dragonfire, the other one probably doesn’t.

Aside from Valyrian works, the tower base does also resemble an ancient structure in far Essos, the Five Forts:

"No discussion of Yi Ti would be complete without a mention of the Five Forts, a line of hulking ancient citadels that stand along the far northeastern frontiers of the Golden Empire, between the Bleeding Sea (named for the characteristic hue of its deep waters, supposedly a result of a plant that grows only there) and the Mountains of the Morn. The Five Forts are very old, older than the Golden Empire itself; some claim they were raised by the Pearl Emperor during the morning of the Great Empire to keep the Lion of Night and his demons from the realms of men...and indeed, there is something godlike, or demonic, about the monstrous size of the forts, for each of the five is large enough to house ten thousand men, and their massive walls stand almost a thousand feet high.

“Certain scholars from the west have suggested Valyrian involvement in the construction of the Five Forts, for the great walls are single slabs of fused black stone that resemble certain Valyrian citadels in the west...but this seems unlikely, for the Forts predate the Freehold's rise, and there is no record of any dragonlords ever coming so far east.

Thus the Five Forts must remain a mystery. They still stand today, unmarked by time, guarding the marches of the Golden Empire against raiders out of the Grey Waste.”

More ancient craft of lost dragonlords, this one being as grand as the Wall, but of fused black stone.

There’s a bunch more to consider, and if you haven’t checked out David Lightbringer’s videos on the topic, please do.

Here’s one on Dawn Age Asshai:

And Dawn Age Westeros:

[Aside: Yes, both of these videos focus on the Great Empire of the Dawn as the most likely source of this prehistoric human civilization.

I know that some ASOIAF fans don’t like all this theorizing about the Great Empire of the Dawn. Isn’t it just some random BS to fill out a giant world-building coffee table book? I don’t think so.

Maybe a good chunk of TWOIAF is just fun filler for fans, but some of it, like the world-building tangents in the series proper, provide some clues that point to important story developments. And there’s a good case to be made that the clues surrounding the Great Empire of the Dawn are pointing to some really important revelations about magic on Planetos, the Long Night, and thus where the story proper will be headed. But I digress.]

***

Anyway, back to this notion of dragonriders.

Why do the maesters discount the notion of earlier dragonriders? Here is how Yandel dismisses the idea that dragons could have come from an ancient forgotten people in Asshai:

“In such fragments of Barth's Unnatural History as remain, the septon appears to have considered various legends examining the origins of dragons and how they came to be controlled by the Valyrians. The Valyrians themselves claimed that dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames, while in Qarth the tales state that there was once a second moon in the sky. One day this moon was scalded by the sun and cracked like an egg, and a million dragons poured forth. In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai'i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.

“Yet if men in the Shadow had tamed dragons first, why did they not conquer as the Valyrians did? It seems likelier that the Valyrian tale is the truest. But there were dragons in Westeros, once, long before the Targaryens came, as our own legends and histories tell us. If dragons did first spring from the Fourteen Flames, they must have been spread across much of the known world before they were tamed. And, in fact, there is evidence for this, as dragon bones have been found as far north as Ib, and even in the jungles of Sothoryos. But the Valyrians harnessed and subjugated them as no one else could.”

This is a good point. If there were highly advanced dragon riders in the world, why is there so little evidence of them? Why do the Ironborn and Hightower legends talk of an ancient seafaring people rather than people who fly? If there were dragonriders everywhere, what happened to all of their dragons? Shouldn’t Westeros at least have more bones scattered around?

***

One possibility is that it’s not actually dragons that the ancient people tamed, but fire wyrms.

David Lightbringer brings up firewyrms in his video as a joke, as in “if not dragons, what…firewyrms?” But I think it’s something that we should consider.

It was necessary to mix firewyrms with wyvern stock in order to produce dragons, which can both fly and breathe fire. Fire wyrms breathe fire, but they can’t fly.

But they can burrow through rock, and thus travel the earth from deep underground.

“Can dragons tunnel through rock, like the firewyrms of old Valyria? She hoped not.” — Daenerys VIII, ADWD

Yes, Viserion seems to be showing off a rather wyrmlike trait with his boring through the rock of the dragonpit.

I’m not sure where this detail of dragons and wyrms tunneling through rock is going, but one possibility is that it explains how the dizzyingly mazelike tunnels in ancient sites like in Lorath and the base of the Hightower were created. In the case of the Hightower fort, the wyrm would have been used to tunnel through rock as well as breathe fire for the creation of fused stone.

Then there’s the story of Hardhome 600 before the series’ main events:

"All that's true, I don't doubt," said Yarwyck, "but it's not a place I'd want to spend a night. You know the tale.”

He did. Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year. Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement.”

So, a fiery disaster described as hell swallowing the area, with the extra detail of blood chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths.

This passage from Septon Barth below seems to evoke the notion of blood-chilling shrieks, though via different wording:

“The Things… Mother have mercy, I do not know how to speak of them… they were… worms with faces… snakes with hands… twisting, slimy, unspeakable things that seemed to write and pulse and squirm as they came bursting from her flesh. Some where no bigger than my little finger, but one at least was as long as my arm… oh, Warrior protect me, the sounds they made…

They died though. I must remember that, cling to that. Whatever they might have been, they were creatures of heat and fire, and they did not love the ice, oh no. One after another they thrashed and writhed and died before my eyes, than the Seven. I will not presume to give them names… they were horrors.” —Fire & Blood

It was after this traumatic experience that Septon Barth undertook his research leading to his book Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: An Unnatural History. So it’s likely that he did give those creatures names. He named them firewyrms.

And the fiery horror of Hardhome seems to have involved firewyrms as well. Bursting from their tunnels in an incandescent fury, then shrieking at the unbearable cold once they emerged.

Why would they do such a thing? Other commenters have suggested: perhaps they were summoned by a sorcerous horn. That could be. Perhaps those are the “giants” in the earth that are awakened to tear down pesky walls and other structures.

***

But it's far from conclusive.

Thinking about the Five Forts, those things are fused stone structures that are almost a thousand feet high. Wouldn’t flying be an absolute necessity in order to make something like that? Perhaps dragons really did come from the Great Empire after all…

But if so, where did those dragons go? One possibility is that the ancient dragonriders played a crucial part in the War for the Dawn against the Others, but the dragons all perished up North.

If that’s the case, perhaps at some point we will catch a glimpse of dragon skeletons scattered about the Land of Always Winter.

If it is simply dragons all around, what do you think the purpose of GRRM teasing out the specific nature of the firewyrms? And what will this ability to burrowing through rock detail contribute to in the series proper?

Any other thoughts?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Similar to, and yet possibly distinct from, the base of the Hightower is the First Keep of Winterfell.

"The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and cross over the armory and the guards hall, leaping roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn't hear you overhead. That brought you up to the blind side of the First Keep, the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was taller than it looked. Only rats and spiders lived there now but the old stones still made for good climbing. You could go straight up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly over empty space, and swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side. From there, if you really stretched, you could reach out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leaned close. The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more than ten feet, and then the crows would come round to see if you'd brought any corn." -- Bran II, AGOT

This mention of gargoyles in the oldest part of Winterfell seemed awful strange to me. I checked out TWOIAF, and GRRM definitely seems to be suggesting that something is odd here. 

"Within its walls, the castle sprawls across several acres of land, encompassing many freestanding buildings. The oldest of these—a long-abandoned tower, round and squat and covered with gargoyles—has become known as the First Keep. Some take this to mean that it was built by the First Men, but Maester Kennet has definitively proved that it could not have existed before the arrival of the Andals since the First Men and the early Andals raised square towers and keeps. Round towers came sometime later." -- Winterfell, TWOIAF

I love the use of "definitely proved" here. Very cheeky, E&L! Maester Kennet seems to be convinced that the oldest part of a structure raised by Brandon the Builder came from a later Andal period, which is preposterous. Similar to the base of the High Tower, this seems to be a clue about a forgotten people who preceded the First Men. There we had fused black stone, and here we have gargoyles.

There's only one other place mentioned that has gargoyles, and it's Dragonstone. The smoking mountain of Dragonstone is mentioned just after this above passage, as it and Winterfell were built over the furnaces of the world, same as the Fourteen Flames.

"Hot springs such as the one beneath Winterfell have been shown to be heated by the furnaces of the world—the same fires that made the Fourteen Flames or the smoking mountain of Dragonstone. Yet the smallfolk of Winterfell and the winter town have been known to claim that the springs are heated by the breath of a dragon that sleeps beneath the castle. This is even more foolish than Mushroom's claims and need not be given any consideration." -- Winterfell, TWOIAF

Like the High Tower base, the details here are playing with the idea that dragonriders, or at least people wedded to fire-magic, could have come to Westeros in the Dawn Age or early Age of Heroes.

And yet, the Hightower write-up states that Bran the Builder raised the stone tower portion of the Hightower thousands of years after the base was constructed. I know it's possible that these ancient magical heroes lived very long lives (or else that Yandel is just dead wrong here), but otherwise it seems as if these were two separate peoples: first came the seafaring people who knew how to work dragonflame, then much later the people of the First Keep.

Brandon the Builder is thought to be among the First Men, yet his design of Winterfell seems proto-Andal, with some Valyrian fire mage leanings as well. Does he represent a people that's distinct from the First Men? He also helped raise the Wall and Storm's End, so what's up with Winterfell's aesthetic and functional connection to Dragonstone?

Riddles in the dark...