Recommended: new 'Wall Origin' theory

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Awesome. 

The axe part of Arson Iceaxe suggests the 'felling' of the trees within the Wall as well. The breaking of the barrier or ward keeping the Others at bay. 

Nice. 

Well Arson Iceaxe: a flame axing ice, suggest to me not trees being felled, but fire chipping away at the ice imprisoning them. In that sense it's good to put a heat source inside the Wall, to prevent the ice from freezing the weirwoods to death.

I keep thinking of Jon praying for the Wall to defend itself against the wildling climbers. What happens? The Wall shudders and the wildlings fall to their death as ice breaks. If we consider weirwoods inside the Wall, then the "Old Gods" heard and answered Jon's prayer. They made the weirwood shudder and shake off some of the ice.

[Sandy Clegg]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

the complete theory about the ice soldiers, which I fundamentally disagree with every way, helped gel George's repeated mention of how the snow wall is being built against the ward at Bloodraven's cave

I keep going back and forth on the ice soldiers too - I mean, it's not like we really have any clear idea of where the Others came from, whether they are Otherised humans, or tree sprits that got Humanised then Otherised, etc etc. Without a clear definition of what the Others are, we're all groping in the dark. 

I think the blood seal idea you write about in your essay is very intriguing, though I'm still nowhere near the end. Blood built the Wall, as has been mentioned already. Getting to the heart of how and why it did so - well, that answer looks to be getting closer and closer.  I think we're in really fertile territory here and it's good to see everyone contributing so many ideas! 

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Do groves or groupings of weirwood trees have magic wards?  If so, are they warded by someone, or is the magic intrinsic to the groves?  I'm thinking of the 31 stumps of the WW trees in the Riverlands on High Heart. The Ghost of High Heart meets the BWB there to tell them her dreams and visions.  She scares the heck out of Arya.   The small folk think the hill is haunted by the ghosts of the Children of the Forest. 

Quotes from the Wiki;  "No harm can ever come to those as sleep here."—Tom of Sevenstreams to Arya Stark.   

"This place belongs to the old gods still ... they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead."—the ghost of High Heart to Thoros of Myr.

Something is going on there, and the stumps of WW, while old must still be connected the weirnet.  Does the weirnet give weirwood groves their power?

 

Also we learn that not only the weirwoods were hacked down, but First Men defended it along with the cotf.

Quote

The great hill called High Heart was especially holy to the First Men, as it had been to the children of the forest before them. Crowned by a grove of giant weirwoods, ancient as any that had been seen in the Seven Kingdoms, High Heart was still the abode of the children and their greenseers. When the Andal king Erreg the Kinslayer surrounded the hill, the children emerged to defend it, calling down clouds of ravens and armies of wolves...or so the legend tells us. Yet neither tooth nor talon was a match for the steel axes of the Andals, who slaughtered the greenseers, the beasts, and the First Men alike, and raised beside the High Heart a hill of corpses half again as high...or so the singers would have us believe. True History suggests otherwise, insisting that the children had abandoned the riverlands long before the Andals crossed the narrow sea. (tWoIaF - The Riverlands)

Side note: True History is a book written by maesters that is pure Andal propagandashit. You can throw away any claim it ever makes. It's main aim is to make Andals look as peaceful people and architectural geniuses who built Storm's End and without whom the First Keep of Winterfell would never have been built. That's why it claims the Long Night happened 8000 years ago, instead of 6000, and claims the Andals invaded Westeros 4000 years ago instead of 2000. It aims to shift the Andal invasion back in time, so they can claim and appropriate culture and technology from 4000-5000 years ago, while they didn't have that at the time. No Andal ever built anything with stone ever in Andalos. There's not one stone ruin of the Andals to be found anywhere in Andalos. Even the last Andal king on Lorath built his "palace fort" out of wood at the heart of the stone maze of the mysterious mazemakers, and by then Norvos was already a thriving Free City, and the dragonlords of Old Valyria wiped him and his people out on Lorath, after which a new people made it a Free City (around 1700 BC). Andals learned to build in stone from the First Men, not the other way around.

Anyway, back to High Heart: so True History's lies can be dismissed and instead we have a "song" that is quite poetic and detailed. Clouds of ravens and armies of wolves (aka greenseers, skinchangers, but also second lives). And greenseers died at this grove. Where would these dying greenseers have chosen to live their second life? The trees or the beasts? 

[Wizz-The-Smith]

1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

Well Arson Iceaxe: a flame axing ice, suggest to me not trees being felled, but fire chipping away at the ice imprisoning them. In that sense it's good to put a heat source inside the Wall, to prevent the ice from freezing the weirwoods to death.

Yep, could well be the case for sure.

My thinking was along the lines of someone trying to break through the Wall from North to South as the Others (and Arson) want to do. If the weirwoods are what is creating the ward, then the Others need to bypass them or somehow destroy them, defeat their magic etc. A symbolic use of the word axe within Arson's name seemed to me to fit with that notion. 

Lots of wordplay with the word fell in the novels as well. @Seams posted about the word fell also meaning seam and speculated that Winterfell was a magic seam. I noted that fell also meant hill and my hollow hills essay was born from that (thanks to Seam's ) Trees being felled, dragons being felled, Winterfell, all the hollow hill sites being fells (including the Wall) House Fell has some really cool symbolism, etc. Loads of it.

Totally fair point though. The best threads and ideas need us to bounce off one another to better see the wood for the (weirwood) trees. 

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Yep, could well be the case for sure.

My thinking was along the lines of someone trying to break through the Wall from North to South as the Others (and Arson) want to do. If the weirwoods are what is creating the ward, then the Others need to bypass them or somehow destroy them, defeat their magic etc. A symbolic use of the word axe within Arson's name seemed to me to fit with that notion. 

Lots of wordplay with the word fell in the novels as well. @Seams posted about the word fell also meaning seam and speculated that Winterfell was a magic seam. I noted that fell also meant hill and my hollow hills essay was born from that (thanks to Seam's ) Trees being felled, dragons being felled, Winterfell, all the hollow hill sites being fells (including the Wall) House Fell has some really cool symbolism, etc. Loads of it.

Totally fair point though. The best threads and ideas need us to bounce off one another to better see the wood for the (weirwood) trees. 

Fell also means "skin". In Dutch we say "vel".

EDIT TO ADD COMING!

So, an Arson (heat/flame) "felling" is "skinchanging a tree". While the Others may not go South, a warm blooded person was never meant to be kept from crossing either north or south. And can a "flame" be an Other?

Edited August 21, 2023 by sweetsunray

[Wizz-The-Smith]

1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

Fell also means "skin". In Dutch we say "vel".

Oh yes! I forgot to mention that one! Skinchanger central! 

There's also the old fantasy trope of 'fell magic'. Traditionally meaning evil magic. But in asoiaf we have hollow hill magic, so perhaps fell magic means hill magic. Although I do tend to think George's magic also has its dark side. I said magic way too much in that post.  

[Wizz-The-Smith]

59 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Do groves or groupings of weirwood trees have magic wards?  If so, are they warded by someone, or is the magic intrinsic to the groves?  I'm thinking of the 31 stumps of the WW trees in the Riverlands on High Heart. The Ghost of High Heart meets the BWB there to tell them her dreams and visions.  She scares the heck out of Arya.   The small folk think the hill is haunted by the ghosts of the Children of the Forest. 

Quotes from the Wiki;  "No harm can ever come to those as sleep here."—Tom of Sevenstreams to Arya Stark.   

"This place belongs to the old gods still ... they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead."—the ghost of High Heart to Thoros of Myr.

Something is going on there, and the stumps of WW, while old must still be connected the weirnet.  Does the weirnet give weirwood groves their power?

 

Nice. Back in the Riverlands with Longrider, it's a good day. 

I've been banging on about wards, weirwood groves, the old gods etc for ages, yet never really considered the groves specifically as being warded. But it does make some sense. @sweetsunray makes a great point about Wun Wun and Co seeking out the grove for safety. And as you have pointed out, the Grove on High Heart is certainly a place where the old gods rule. R'hollor has no power there etc. Shrunken and feeble but still holding sway over the power that the hill and its grove possesses sounds extremely greenseerish. Bloodraven and the Black Gate of course, not our Bran. Nice quote from Tom 'o' Sevens as well, that works really well with what Sweetsunray mentions about the grove of nine. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Wizz-The-Smith

[LongRider]

The grove of nine past Wall, my idea is the ward there may have been quiescent until that pesky Jon Snow wanted to say his NW vows there, and had other recruits want to do that as well.  
The scene is really quite moving,  even Bowen Marsh seemed respectful. 
The next crop of recruits came after Jon had been voted LC.  Did the grove seem more powerful then?   Worshippers of the Old Gods, did they awaken the nine trees? 
 

@sweetsunray her point about possible wolves and their 2nd lives defending High Heart , great insight. 
 

As for the WWs near the Wall, the Wall has been there for thousands of years, we’ve been told, so they may have just been chopped down over time. 
 

Edited August 21, 2023 by LongRider

[Sandy Clegg]

41 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

My thinking was along the lines of someone trying to break through the Wall from North to South as the Others (and Arson) want to do. If the weirwoods are what is creating the ward, then the Others need to bypass them or somehow destroy them, defeat their magic etc. A symbolic use of the word axe within Arson's name seemed to me to fit with that notion. 

My axe thread makes a lot of connections between axes and winged entities: dragons (or possibly bats) so my take on this focuses more on the idea that Arson Iceaxe is trapped in the ice, rather than his tunnelling north/south. An 'arson ice axe' is an extremely succinct metaphor for an 'ice dragon'. 

The Wall is long, and huge, And we're seeing in this thread that there may be a lot more to the Wall's interior than we previously believed. Think of this moment where Bowen Marsh takes Jon through the cavernous store rooms, with the standout long tally of food stores emphasising the sheer scale of the place:

Quote

In the granaries were oats and wheat and barley, and barrels of coarse ground flour. In the root cellars strings of onions and garlic dangled from the rafters, and bags of carrots, parsnips, radishes, and white and yellow turnips filled the shelves. One storeroom held wheels of cheese so large it took two men to move them. In the next, casks of salt beef, salt pork, salt mutton, and salt cod were stacked ten feet high. Three hundred hams and three thousand long black sausages hung from ceiling beams below the smokehouse. In the spice locker they found peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon, mustard seeds, coriander, sage and clary sage and parsley, blocks of salt. Elsewhere were casks of apples and pears, dried peas, dried figs, bags of walnuts, bags of chestnuts, bags of almonds, planks of dry smoked salmon, clay jars packed with olives in oil and sealed with wax. One storeroom offered potted hare, haunch of deer in honey, pickled cabbage, pickled beets, pickled onions, pickled eggs, and pickled herring.

As they moved from one vault to another, the wormways seemed to grow colder. Before long Jon could see their breath frosting in the lantern light. "We're beneath the Wall."

"And soon inside it," said Marsh. "The meat won't spoil in the cold. For long storage, it's better than salting."

The implication being that the interior of the Wall contains at least enough hollow areas for long-term food storage. Meat storage. Living meat?

Are we so sure that the purpose of the Wall was to act as a barrier? When we get such exaggerated passages focusing on its properties as a container?

I've maintained previously that we really cannot take the tales of Old Nan or maesters as gospel. The cause/effect chain of the appearance of the Others and the building of the Wall is shrouded in thousands of years of history. We don't know that they are trying to cross over to get further South.  We really don't know a thing about their motivations.

But we've established for a while now that the Wall is something of a misnomer name. It is not just a barrier - it's a fortress, a home for the Night's Watch, a food store, a magical warding site. A mechanism. The fact that it looks like a Wall is merely its most obvious characteristic. But the Wall itself, and what lies within, may in fact be the Others' ultimate goal. Arson iceaxe, to me, represents something within its icy walls, trapped but itching to escape ...

[Wizz-The-Smith]

41 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

So, an Arson (heat/flame) "felling" is "skinchanging a tree".

Nice. Loads of fire imagery around weirwoods and greenseeing. Reaching for the fire of the gods. 

51 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

And can a "flame" be an Other?

Maybe they're sick of being cold. 

"If ice can burn, then love and hate can mate." (Jojen)

The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions and sleeping silks. (Daenerys X, AGOT)

[sweetsunray]

2 minutes ago, LongRider said:

The grove of nine past Wall, my idea is the ward there may have been quiescent until that pesky Jon Snow wanted to say his NW vows there, and had other recruits want to do that as well.  
The scene is really quite moving,  even Bowen Marsh seemed respectful. 
The next crop of recruits came after Jon had been voted LC.  Did the grove seem more powerful then?   Worshippers of the Old Gods, did they awaken the nine trees? 
 

@sweetsunray her point about possible wolves and their 2nd lives defending High Heart , great insight. 
 

As Fumo WWs near the Wall, the Wall has been there for thousands of years, we’ve been told, so they may have just been chopped down over time. 

It's also the grove where Ghost discovers the two wights they find early on, the ones they drag to CB and steal into Jeor's bedchamber. Jon finds the door of the room he was locked into open and a dead NW man. But before even trying the door, Ghost is acting out of sorts and he wakes from the incredible cold, despite the fact that on that hot late summer day, the Wall was weeping.

I've been wondering, whether it's a hint that the wights were close to the grove, but not actually within its perimeter.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

21 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

My axe thread makes a lot of connections between axes and winged entities: dragons (or possibly bats) so my take on this focuses more on the idea that Arson Iceaxe is trapped in the ice, rather than his tunnelling north/south. An 'arson ice axe' is an extremely succinct metaphor for an 'ice dragon'. 

Sweet, I'll have to read that thread.

21 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Are we so sure that the purpose of the Wall was to act as a barrier? When we get such exaggerated passages focusing on its properties as a container?

I've not said the Wall is the barrier, but that the magic ward created by the weirwood trees and their magic is. (If I've said Wall by mistake, apologies) I do think the various points made about the purpose of the ice Wall itself being a mystery are extremely valid. Cool that you've identified it as a container as well though. You're right that we don't know for sure the Others want to come South, but if they just chill up North that would be a huge anticlimax. We know from Coldhands that Otherised beings cannot cross the warded Wall, so I've always supposed that that means the ward is there to keep the Others from coming South. The warded Wall is containing the Others. 

21 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

But the Wall itself, and what lies within, may in fact be the Others' ultimate goal. Arson iceaxe, to me, represents something within its icy walls, trapped but itching to escape ...

Definitely. I think the weirwood trees inside the Wall and the on the God's Eye are what they are after. They may want to destroy some sort of magic that's holding them back, or perhaps they want to take back what was originally theirs? 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Wizz-The-Smith

[Wizz-The-Smith]

16 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I've been wondering, whether it's a hint that the wights were close to the grove, but not actually within its perimeter.

Nice catch. Could well be. 

[Sandy Clegg]

9 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

the weirwood trees inside the Wall and the on the God's Eye are what they are after. They may want to destroy some sort of magic that's holding them back, or perhaps they want to take back what was originally theirs? 

I'm literally terrified to even speculate about the God's Eye. Isn't it weird that there are so few theorists willing to tackle it? It just feels like that might just be where the final act of ADOS ends up. George is keeping it so under wraps.

10 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

We know from Coldhands that Otherised beings cannot cross the warded Wall, so I've always supposed that that means the ward is there to keep the Others from coming South.

I think this is George's intent, clearly - to guide us into thinking that because the Other's cannot cross the Wall, that this is their intended goal. But he is a master at misdirecting. Perhaps they cannot cross the Wall because the Wall is a kind of 'Other Devourer'?  The wards that you mention which keep the Wall going might not simply repel Others - they might absorb Others, and recycle them to replenish itself. I'm just spitballing here obviously, but after reading @sweetsunray's essays it does feel like Jon Snow being at the Wall and the new coming of the Others cannot be coincidental .

For the Others, avoiding the 'huge thing that kills you if you go near it' would have the effect of them not wanting to cross it. or even go near it.  It also gives them a reason to want to destroy it, however, and Jon Snow might part of their plans to do so. 

I might actually be starting to root (no pun intended) for the Others, hmm. 

[SaffronLady]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

And can a "flame" be an Other?

A cold so severe that it becomes "a burning cold"?

[sweetsunray]

50 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

A cold so severe that it becomes "a burning cold"?

The cold "bites": frostbite. And you don't actually feel it when it does.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

42 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I think this is George's intent, clearly - to guide us into thinking that because the Other's cannot cross the Wall, that this is their intended goal. But he is a master at misdirecting. Perhaps they cannot cross the Wall because the Wall is a kind of 'Other Devourer'?  The wards that you mention which keep the Wall going might not simply repel Others - they might absorb Others, and recycle them to replenish itself.

Well, I cannot deny the possibility that's for sure. Could absolutely be what George is going for. I agree George is a master at misdirecting the reader, but an entire novel series talking about the Wall coming down, the Others coming South, the Long Night etc seems like a bit much for me. However, misdirecting the reader regards what the Others motives are makes more sense to me. Maybe they do just want the weirnet back, or to break some fell magic a human greenseer cast upon them etc

Always good to share ideas though, it's the best way to keep opinions fresh and fluid. And I'm always willing to change my opinion.

52 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I might actually be starting to root (no pun intended) for the Others, hmm. 

Haha! 

There's more to their tale than meets the eye for sure. 

[sweetsunray]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The implication being that the interior of the Wall contains at least enough hollow areas for long-term food storage. Meat storage. Living meat?

Are we so sure that the purpose of the Wall was to act as a barrier? When we get such exaggerated passages focusing on its properties as a container?

It preserves.

In Arya's Time Travel in the Riverlands she visits several places while the Brotherhood is asking everyone about the latest they heard about Beric. They talk with a maester, a Lady of the Leaves, a septon, etc. Tracing the hints and clues I can make out that these three "sources" are set around the same time period in the past:

• young maester = young Citadel, but having acquired the monopoly of handling the ravens (so after introduction of writing, loss of greenseeing/skinchanging to speak True Tongue with raven, loss of Old Tongue), but a time when the Citadel did not yet claim all the children of the forest were gone out of the world (he suggests to inquire with the Lady of the Leaves)
• Lady of the Leaves, old, skinny and sickly, talking about autumn and soon having to depart, and having seen 12 wolves hunting pass by. They'd have seen them in the trees if they'd only looked up = Era of the Wolf Den and cadet branches, and the Starks hunting enemies. The CotF are still in the North, but about to leave the North to go beyond the Wall or to die. The hunting and Wolf Den hints at the time of the War Across the Water with the Andals.
• septon: he's ranting about the wolves pillaging and cutting off the breasts of the Mother (wooden statue) = definitely the War Across the Water, where the Andals claimed the Starks and First Men of the worst atrocities imaginable, but the Northern stories mention none of this.

With the first and the septon we each time get a tableau or picture of a version of Beric and Brandon the Builder.

With the Maester there's Ser Lychester. Lych- means corpse and ester is vinegar, which we use in the kitchen to pickle food and extend its shelf life (a preservation method of food). So, Ser Lychester is Ser Pickled Corpse. He doesn't understand their questions, is very old and addle brained, but he remembers his most heroic deed of his young life: he fought a Ser Maynard (red hair, black hearted) over a bridge, was struck 6 times, but killed Maynard and held the bridge. Nobody knows who Maynard was, what bridge he's talking, when this happened, ... His keep is square and ruined. When they leave the next day, Gendry wonders if the very insignificant bridge behind the keep was that bridge, Jack-be-Lucky guesses it must be so for he sees no other bridge around, and Tom Sevenstreams (the singer) claims that if the Pickled Corpse only  had kept a singer, there would have been a song about him and we'd know all the particular "for certain", and he'd be as famous as the Dragonknight.

I believe Ser Pickled Corpse is a painted picture version of Brandon the Builder/last hero. It's like looking at an iconography of Saint George and the Dragon of the 10th century, who is some rewritten version of Perseus in truth. So, you get all the wrong details about the time and era. We're looking at what the legend of Brandon the Builder would be rewritten into if we'd let Andal propaganda and maester views take over: Andal knights, square keep (not round), completely unimportant battle. In truth we have elements in this short little scene that hark back to Dr. Weird's battle against the black-red demon of Only Kids are Afraid in the Dark, except in that very old old story of George, Dr. Weird is struck 3 times before defeating the demon. Here it's 6 times, aka twice 3x. Ser Pickled Corpse thus fought the same basic battle of good and evil twice over (Long Night and Night's King?).

Another hint of the Andal influence but that Ser Pickled Corpse is a hero of the age of heroes is the maester's name. It's not mentioned in the text,  but the appendix of aSoS. He's called Roone, which is a phonetical misspelling of the name Rune. Ser Pickled Corpse is thus someone who for sure a rune was carved into a stone to commemorate him. Why do I say his name is misspelled? The Andals introduced writing, which led to the loss of language (Old Tongue) and ultimately the way on using ravens to speak the message directly, giving the maesters power at households. The Septons were the first ones to transcribe stories and songs onto parchment. They would have done so in their own language, and having the power to decide on the spelling of a name: Roone/Rune, Ser Win or Serwyn, Nght's Watch or Knight's Watch, etc. George's wordplay with names and spelling games is not just an internal literary joke. He actually used it in his world building as a sign of the changes and influence over time and invasion of cultures.

And of course the comparing of Ser Pickled Corpse to the Dragonknight should perk up our eyes: a Kingsguard (guardian of the protector of the realm), a "white sword", Aemon Targaryen (a dragon), and also a maester at the Wall whose life was being preserved while at the Wall.

The scene and dialogue with the Lady of the Leaves is far more elaborate. Tom half-sings as they go up into the tree village. Jack-be-Lucky details the death of his father, and several of his brothers. The Lady cites all the sources she had the news of Beric being daggered in the eye: a begging brother who had it from someone who saw it happen. So, lots of details. Not always details we may care about for now and for these characters. But we see that with the stand-in cotf like Leaf we learn a lot of everybody talking in that moment, and a claim is extensively sourced. We don't see a Beric stand-in here or a Brandon, but we do hear great relief from the Lady of the Leaves to hear that Beric is still alive and she blesses him and his fire priest. Tom's earlier claim about keeping singers is true: you know all the particulars and for certain, even when nothing important is happening, or not at least in the eyes of the CotF. The War Across the Waters and those Wolf Den Starks sound interesting to us and to learn more about. The CotF don't much care about the quick humans warring one another.

Then we get to the septon. It's an underground place, everything above is burned and plundered. We have all the claims of atrocities agains the Mother (who is actually but a wooden statue) of their holy place, and then we see a Lightning Lord, but he's a fake one. Has a makeshirt plate armor with a sigil on it that is a crude copy of the original. He's one of the lesser fighting men who pretends to be a Beric to fool the Lions and the Mummers, to keep the legend alive, but it's not really him. And this Beric is on the septon's side?!? We see broken wine caskets and Tom sings silly songs, and most of the convo now turns to silly talk about affairs: Greenbeard jokes she should watch out he'd not marry Arya who claims she's almost a woman now, Tom's song about the floppy fish of Edmure after he was too drunk, House Tully hating songs and hating singers and therefore not trustworthy, and hostages for ransom. So, basically it's mostly silly talk, claims of terrors and atrocities of stuff that is not magically or corporeal relevant. I'm not saying, dessecration of a church cannot be villainous, but that Mother statue wasn't an actual woman, and she's just an idea. The songs are silly, the stories are silly and about stuff that might entertain, but are not fundamentally informative. It is interesting to have so many references to "drunk" and "wine" stuff in relation to the septon, because we often get allusions to "drunken light" or "drinking" when have a glimpse about stuff of the past, which often made me wonder what time period or whose distortion George is alluding to then. It seems to be Andal septons as source related. Sort of the songs and stories that Sansa loves and especially Arya dislikes and refers to as "stupid". 

And then she visits High Heart, and the ghost of HH with her albino skin and red eyes, seeing what is true, and the safety of the cut grove, which gives us enough info to dismiss the "True History" claims. The next day she learns they have the scent on Beric and she'll soon meet him in person, and arrive at Acorn Hall with her skin being scrubbed twice and put in two different dresses (acorn and lilac with baby pearls) and Gendry telling her that the flaming sword is but an alchemist trick. And Beric's blood magic trick is indeed a type of wildfire alchemist trick.

All the while we have a pickled corpse, and constant allusions to a resurrected greenseer (hanging, losing an eye). George incorporated the resurrection of Beric, not just because he could and liked to write the BwB... it's about Brandon the Builder sitll being preserved, a second life. Though you need to keep your head for that. (Bring in the "talking heads" at the Whispers)

Oh and

• maesters don't know details, nor do you tell them the truth (Thoros cut Beric down before he could die from hanging), because they wouldn't believe it anyway. They aid in the Andal propaganda and make crucial history less important.
• The children started to disappear from the North around the era of the Wolf Den and War Across the Water. That's when the Starks began to forget what's important, and what the Old Ways were truly about, and didn't consider the CotF as necessary allies anymore. Long and detailed songs and ballads of old are a reliable source.
• Most songs that Septons popularized are mostly for drunken entertainment and romantic frivolity; they like to portray heroes and cotf as jolly good fun who were really on the Andal side (think the weird stuff of the Falcon Knight and earlier FM hero in the Vale), and their claims about the Northern First Men's verocity and crimes are exaggerated. A robbed statue becomes a raped woman whose breasts were cut off.
• HH disproves True History's propaganda and claims: hence the Long Night was 6000 years ago, the Andal invasion 2000 years ago, and judging by the young maester versus the pickled/preserved corpse (about a fifth of the age of Aemon), we can estimate the Citadel was formed or erected about 300-350 years before the Andal Invasion. This throws a huge wrench in the claims of Peremore having been a son of Uthor, or of Uthor's time, and thus Brandon building the Hightower.
• The time that Arya travels to in all those places up until HH (and including HH): about 1500 BC.

ETA: the clue to Arya going back into time of the history relevant to her own. She declares herself a Stark to Harwin and becomes the BwB's hostage and taken on the trip at a certain Inn: the Inn of the Kneeling Man, who is Torrhen Stark. When she leaves, Hot Pie (!!!!) remains behind and will henceforth be named Boy (which will be confusing, because the other adopted boy also goes by the name Boy). Two anonymous Boys (Brandon and Jon?). And Arya remembers leaving Hot Pie behind in the middle of her observing that they are "going the wrong way" (based on where the moss grows on the trees), and she's not going to Riverrun, that reference to Finnegan's Wake, acting like a type of story wormhole to go back in time or send bones back to KL or make people face the consequences of broken promises.

Edited August 21, 2023 by sweetsunray

[Seams]

I stepped out for awhile and this thread grew beyond my ability to keep up. I am responding to some points that were raised but I won't try to cite people's comments which are already buried like the 79 sentinels.

The 79 Sentinels were deserters. I think there is anagram wordplay on "red trees = deserter." So the sentinels buried standing up in The Wall are a great hint that there are weirwood trees in The Wall. 

Furthermore, the 79 Sentinels are imprisoned and therefore unable to "leave." One of the important clues about imprisoning the weirwoods is that the ice might be preventing them from putting out leaves. I believe that the cycle of falling leaves creating humus (not hummus, although GRRM does make some allusions to the pun by mentioning peas and peas porridge). My guess would be that the trees ordinarily need humus to live. If they can't put out leaves, they instead live on blood absorbed from the soil.

Gendel and Gorne are important clues about the nature of the ward and The Wall and the tunnels under The Wall. What if the ward at the Black Gate isn't about the distinction between the living or "other-ized" beings, but requires the presence of a "brother" to pass? The Night's Watch are all Black Brothers, so they can pass if they swear to their oath. Gendel and Gorne were able to pass under The Wall to reach Winterfell but one brother died there. The other brother tried to get back Beyond the Wall, but was unable to do so. Ygritte says he was lost, but maybe he needed his brother to get past the ward. 

It's possible that the "brother ward" applies only to passing UNDER The Wall -- GRRM makes a point of telling us that Meera scales The Wall all by herself just for the heck of it. 

Another possibility is that a Frey must be present to make certain crossings, i.e., a Lord of the Crossing. This is why Walder-known-as-Hodor is a necessary member of Bran's traveling companions. Somewhere in this forum, I worked out that "Wald" is also the German word for woods. I suspect that Lady Stoneheart's vengeance against House Frey will take the form of burning down a woods, similar to the mysterious fire at Wat's Wood in The Sworn Sword. So maybe Hodor and/or House Frey also represent trees, adding to the sense that there are trees magically embedded in The Wall.

Building on the nice catch about Arson Ice Axe, I would point out that Craster asks Mormont for an axe that he can use to defend his family. I thought he was implying that he needed to defend them from the Others, but maybe that is not made explicit. Mormont gives him the axe but Craster has it in hand when he is killed by Dirk - one of the deserters. 

Grenn is also chopping wood when Jon Snow follows Ghost off of the Fist. Jon Snow gives stew to Grenn and then slips through a gap in the stones and palisade. He tells the guard he is going to get water, but notes that the guard didn't ask why he had no bucket. I think there may be some kind of pairing of buckets and axes - one of GRRM's pairs of opposites. This might go to the symbolism we are trying to work out around ice and trees. If you have one, you don't need the other. Here, again, I am thinking of the way to the Eyrie. You either ride in a bucket or clamber up using hand holds chipped in the rock. Hmm. An ox turns the winch that raises or lowers the bucket at the Eyrie. I wonder whether this is ax / ox wordplay. 

Through Summer, Bran later eats the deserter Dirk and his companions. Cold Hands brings mystery meat to the struggling travelers and readers suspect that it is not pork but more flesh from these deserters. So we would need to figure out why Bran and his companions need to ingest "deserter = red trees," and whether this contributes to their ability to cross the ward into Bloodraven's cave.  

One of the wordplay posts pondered whether "Well" and "Wall" are a wordplay pair. This could explain why Samwell crosses below The Wall, through the well, to return to Castle Black, but Jon Snow (his "brother") climbs over the top. (But someone will need to sort out how this relates to Walder-known-as-Hodor.) I suspect that stone and water might also be a pair of GRRM's opposites. Sweetsunray predicted long ago that an earthquake or some kind of disaster will eventually bring down the mountain called The Giant's Lance, where the Eyrie perches on a shoulder of the mountain. I think that will be destruction of the stone. Will that occur simultaneously with the destruction of the ice Wall? Or the flooding of a river? 

Maybe the point is that the Wall incorporates tree, ice and stone - this is why the ward is so strong. The Black Brothers are charged with spreading gravel on the path along the top of The Wall. They also drop stones and gravel on their enemies. The three elements of tree, ice and stone could match with the waycastles sky, snow and stone at the Eyrie. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that The Wall is maintained through human sacrifice, not through imprisonment or interment of Others. (As I mentioned earlier, without leaves, the trees may depend on blood for nourishment.) Northern families send their second sons to serve in the Night's Watch. Aliser Thorne tells the new recruits that they will all die. Certain types of blood may be more desirable than others, and where the blood is spilled might make a difference - Mormont says he wants Jon Snow's wolf and his Stark blood Beyond the Wall. Jon Snow is later stabbed - his blood spilled - Below the Wall. Perhaps Mormont and Bowen Marsh are in the dark, however, as we suspect that Jon Snow's paternal blood is Targaryen, not Stark. If that matters, the Targaryen blood on The Wall may be the thing that brings it down - Arson Ice Axe personified. 

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

The implication being that the interior of the Wall contains at least enough hollow areas for long-term food storage. Meat storage. Living meat?

When all the castles were being used by the NW, that would be a lot of storerooms, i.e., many hollow areas.   So, one might say, there are several hollow hills in the Wall.  Hollow hills and magic wards, the interior of the Wall is getting to be more interesting than the exterior.