Heresy 3

[The Mother of The Others]

There's gotta be some 'ting going on with this father no sons business, combined with how Crastor was leaving his sons out on the front porch the way euros leave cookies out for the elves. There must be power to be gained from this blood sacrifice, but it's a power no one should have. Because you have to collaborate with the enemy of mankind in order to get the kind of safety Crastor was enjoying. So we can't have the Watch being tempted to make life easier for themselves, because then they'd be in bed with the foe they're supposed to be on guard against. So they're forbidden from fathering sons so as to never be tempted to make a gift of those sons.

No Craster's sons weren't being transformed into the whitewalkers. That'd turn the whitewalkers into small potatoes, reducing them to mere mutations that can't stand on their own as an entity. They are their own thing, you just wait and see. the others are the others; the children are the children. But with that said, there's still something going on here. Maybe by sacrificing up these warm bodies, we're giving the walkers the body parts they use as props when casting their ghastly bloodmagic spells, so they regard you as a valuable farmer who's willing to supply them with one of their staple crops after that. Which is why they leave you be. So by currying favor with the Others this way, men like the Night King are able to set themselves above the rest of mankind. They recieve special protections from the worst that the cold has to offer. They start to be numbered as part of the unnatural regime that rules the winter. A cult of thralls gathers round them. Until the time comes when truer men loyal to their own species must move to strike down these Collaborators with the Cold. Because, unchecked, the whitewalkers would use these selfish collaborators as footholds from which to reach ever further into the heart of human society so that they might pry open the heart and soul of us and let the cold rush in to freeze out our humanity.

[RevengeOfTheStarks]

I don't think the Others, WW, whatever, can be written off as just some extra-human force that is the enemy of mankind. This doesn't seem like a grandiose, cosmic good vs. evil kind of story at all. Only in the "cosmic battle of good vs. evil" do things try to utterly destroy other things just because they are sworn and mortal enemies. In real life, and in this book, groups have certain interests of their own which they hold because that's just what's good for them, and they act to fulfill these interests. Actions have a positive motivation: what's best for your group; not a negative motivation: hatred for this other group that you just absolutely have to destroy. Along the way they make enemies and alliances which form and shift based on the interactions and overlap of the interests of all parties involved.

I think there have been shifting alliances between the Others and men, in particular the first men and the White Walkers are the soldiers of the Others.

[hotweaselsoup]


Yes yes please! The tree-ninjas are back...
The Reeds are the descendants of the wood dancers. Obviously 
And that makes the Starks their distant descendants too, a long long way back the King in the North married the Swamp Kings daughter no?.

Yes, tree-ninjas ftw! There may be some connection there with the ravens, as well - birds like to hang around in trees, too :laugh: (The Children have three fingers and a thumb, and long black nails, if I remember correctly. Bird feet/talons, in other words. The thing I take from this is that skin-changing/warging is a two-way street. You go into an animal, and a bit of that animal comes back into you. I think this is how all the human/animal hybrids occurred. Not so much a mixing of DNA, but a mixing of minds. This is why the Starks truly do have wolf blood, and why the Targaryens really are part dragon, and why the ravens are intelligent and the Mormonts are hairy as bears. (All in my opinion, of course))

And I forgot about the King in the North/Marsh King alliance - but yeah, the Reeds and Starks must be cousins! Excellent catch.




Right you are, this is a strong connection IMO. Great catch on Summer's thoughts here!
What do you think about my suggestion that at some point the wood dancers magic was "copied" by humans? But they used ice magic instead of earth magic, which would be the magic of choice of the Children and wood dancers.

Hmm, not sure. But I think at some point humans gained magical knowledge from the Children - whether they stole it, or it was freely given to them through an alliance is still unclear to me - and I think that the human(s) were corrupted by that power. Either that or the Children, or a faction of the CotF, were corrupted by some power. Anyway, SOMEONE was corrupted by power! :drunk:






I think it was strange that they did not accept Craster, but it could have been a change in command that influenced the stand on such things, since they took Mance in some years later. (maybe 20 years?) Or maybe Craster's father was an important man on the Watch and they did not want to confront this issue. His mother was chased off by his father's brothers in the Watch, so maybe the father never knew about him.

Any thoughts that Craster's dad might have been Bloodraven, or is that too out there? I think of Craster as being upwards of sixty years old or so - his hair is described as grey gone to white, I think - so would the timeline fit? If so, his sons might have some special abilities that would be attractive to White Walkers. King's blood, or something… Although, would Bloodraven have chased after a wildling woman? She did come from Whitetree village, which is the Blackwood sigil, but it seems a stretch to think of Bloodraven doing something like that. Eh - it doesn't really feel right, now that I think on it. Craster is described as beefy, with a broad, flat nose and a downturned mouth - not much like Bloodraven at all.



Maybe the slavers and demons are one and the same? The Others? The rumour could be that he deals with demons, but the only thing the Watch have noticed is that his sons are given away, so it could be perceived like he is selling them.

Yeah, probably just one of those rumors that springs up around shady characters. But the mention of slavers just struck me as a bit odd, as I think of north of the Wall as being all about the "free folk". The full quote is

Dywen said Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper, and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons. "And worse," the old forester would add, clacking his wooden teeth. "There's a cold smell to that one, there is."

[Black Crow]

Just following on from or rather developing last night's thoughts...

I don't actually think the White Walkers are necessarily the Children's Wood Dancers in their winter coats, but that the Nights King and Craster were giving up their sons to be the winter version, ie; the White Walkers, while the Wood Dancers stayed in the warm.

The other point being that if the Wood Dancers are wearing stealth armour they've probably been out and about all the time - without being seen - and perhaps its only with the approach of Winter that Craster has been told to give up his sons to be Walkers.

[mrazny]

I like the idea of the weirwood significance.

I also thought about the reason for the raven screaming tree before Asha entered, but had not come up with anything so far. I think you are right about the raven, and I have long thought weirwood proximity is important since the free folk believe the trees can protect them from the white cold and/or white walkers or wights. It would be interesting to see how Melisandre can handle her powers of she ever comes to the Nightfort, where a weirwood sapling is growing, and the Black Gate is.

Thinking about the women's role, it's an old idea in real world history that women are connected more closely than men to nature and the mysteries of the moon, the tide and magic. But there is an ugly side to these ideas, whereas women are "wild", dangerous and morally weak men are rational, strong and in their right to "tame" these woman who can't take care of themselves. It's like the stories in ASoIaF of the mysterious women that seduces a man and he enslaves other men, i.e. the Other woman and the Night's King, the cold woman and the Shrouded Lord, and then Melisandre and Stannis. Women are dangerous... It fits with the ideology of Westeros' and Essos' patriarchal societies, but not with the overall story of ASoIaF. I'd like to think GRRM is not interested in portraying women as more prone to sorcery.

ETA: didn't Mirri Maz Duur learn about sorcery from Marwyn the mage? And just as Shiera was known for sorcery, so was Bloodraven...

I don't think Alysane Mormont taking Asha to the weirwood had much to do with them being women, but more because they were friends and Asha being an openminded person that took interest in these things, or simply because Alys wanted to go there and Asha had to come along since she was under her guard.

About the Mormonts, their sigil is not the giant breaking free, that is the Umbers.

As I'm reading your response I had the same thought and d'oh moment that I mixed up the umber and mormont sign. I think I mentioned the br counterpoint, and with a patriarchal society that at least mistrusts magic its hard to go by how many legends speak of magic as to the male female splits, I still find it intriguing how few north women we see. I don't think asha is brought along because she's female, I'm much more curious about alysane. It not a well founded thought that she may be more mystical or knowledgeable than she appears, but that's my feel.

I dont have my thoughts fully formed yet, but the mormonts are major players, and I'm starting to get the feel that its not all by accident and coincidence.

[Ibbison from Ibben]

I don't actually think the White Walkers are necessarily the Children's Wood Dancers in their winter coats, but that the Nights King and Craster were giving up their sons to be the winter version, ie; the White Walkers, while the Wood Dancers stayed in the warm.

The other point being that if the Wood Dancers are wearing stealth armour they've probably been out and about all the time - without being seen - and perhaps its only with the approach of Winter that Craster has been told to give up his sons to be Walkers.

All the posts mentioning the similarity of the "leaf armor" of the CotF and the "ice armor" of the WW are very thought-provoking. There could be many different explanations for the similarity, but they seem to be parallel forms using different types of magic.

Craster doesn't have so much as one son hanging around, so I would guess he's given them all up, but the point linking the sacrificed sons and the upcoming winter is good. If indeed the WW are taking Craster's sons, there is no reason to believe that the WW had a donor previous to Craster. They might not have needed one until recently.

[Ibbison from Ibben]

The wood dancers must have been their warriors, I proposed that in the original thread (I think it was) since a dance refers to conflict, war and fighting in GRRM-language. Just like the Water dancers as you say....

The description of the wood dancers sound a lot like the Others, but not entirely....

I keep trying to make sense out of the different magical forms by trying to find parallel forms between them. If the different forms of magic are really completely different, it isn't a valid approach. But if it is, maybe we should expand a bit.

Several posters (including me) have tried to draw parallels between the WW and the Magical Red Priests like Mel and Moqorro. (I'm quite sure there are lots of Red Priests that do little or no magic.) I've also tried to include that fire mage we saw in Qarth in the model. But the WW seem much more like warriors than mages or priests. And we know the CotF had both Greenseers and Wood Dancers. The parallels between the WW and the Wood Dancers seem to be particularly strong.

Perhaps we should be looking for both Magic Users and Warriors of each type. We have heard of Greenseers and Wood Dancers for the CotF (Earth-type magic). We've seen the WW, who are great ice-type warriors but we haven't seen them do any magic. Perhaps there are Ice Mages working with them, behind the front lines. We've seen Fire Mages, but we haven't heard of them engaging in battle- and that's surprising. A dude who can climb a fiery ladder should be able to kick some butt with a sellsword company. (Of course, he hasn't been very powerful until recently when magic started returning.) There should at least be legends. Or maybe there are.

AA might have been a Fire Warrior, not a priest or mage.

So here's another cracked pot to be used for target practice. Because target practice helps us improve.

[Eyron]

Marwyn taught MMD "secrets of the body" (and the common tongue) so she learned the blood magic elsewhere (probably Asshai, as she says she learned from shadowbinders there).

Yeah I don't think she learned blood magic from Marwyn, but I think she learned about magic from him, since he is the archmaester who studies and teaches magic at the Citadel. He also went to Asshai, we don't when (only that he recently came back from there). She learned the secrets of the human body from him as you say, but what do these secrets contain? Maybe more than just healing, the power of blood perhaps. We don't know, but I think she could have gotten the inspiration to go to Asshai from his teachings.

Yes, tree-ninjas ftw! There may be some connection there with the ravens, as well - birds like to hang around in trees, too :laugh: (The Children have three fingers and a thumb, and long black nails, if I remember correctly. Bird feet/talons, in other words. The thing I take from this is that skin-changing/warging is a two-way street. You go into an animal, and a bit of that animal comes back into you. I think this is how all the human/animal hybrids occurred. Not so much a mixing of DNA, but a mixing of minds. This is why the Starks truly do have wolf blood, and why the Targaryens really are part dragon, and why the ravens are intelligent and the Mormonts are hairy as bears. (All in my opinion, of course))

This is a very interesting idea. I like the notion of the mixing of minds and the change in appearance. Borroq looked like his boar too. But you know what this means when it comes to the Umbers and their drop of giant blood then, right? at some point an Umber skinchanged a giant... schhh...

The Children would have skinchanged ravens for tens of thousands of years, as well as other animals. If that leaves a mark, it could be why they have so many animal features as you say, the eyes of a cat, the dappled skin like a doe... I wonder what they looked like in the beginning then? If they skinchanged humans they would look more and more human... Maybe they have? Perhaps some of them can pass for humans now. :wideeyed:

Hmm, not sure. But I think at some point humans gained magical knowledge from the Children - whether they stole it, or it was freely given to them through an alliance is still unclear to me - and I think that the human(s) were corrupted by that power. Either that or the Children, or a faction of the CotF, were corrupted by some power. Anyway, SOMEONE was corrupted by power! :drunk:

This is exactly where I am right now! I'm not sure who or why but, someone was definitely corrupted from wielding magic. In an earlier discussion on the subject I proposed that the First Men learned magic as a part of the deal when the pact was signed, but then used it for very bad purposes and the result was the Long Night.

I'm thinking that the Starks and the Children have a special status in this, maybe because it was one of their own, (part Child-part Stark person) that did it, and that is why they feel responsible for protecting the rest of the people from them. Like a constant moral counterweight to the manifestation of the worst part of themselves.

Any thoughts that Craster's dad might have been Bloodraven, or is that too out there? I think of Craster as being upwards of sixty years old or so - his hair is described as grey gone to white, I think - so would the timeline fit? If so, his sons might have some special abilities that would be attractive to White Walkers. King's blood, or something… Although, would Bloodraven have chased after a wildling woman? She did come from Whitetree village, which is the Blackwood sigil, but it seems a stretch to think of Bloodraven doing something like that. Eh - it doesn't really feel right, now that I think on it. Craster is described as beefy, with a broad, flat nose and a downturned mouth - not much like Bloodraven at all.


Got me looking for flat noses :)

So far: Donal Noye has a broad flat nose (a Baratheon man), Borroq has a flat nose (the skinchanger) and Boros Blount has a flat nose.

I can't see a plausible connection to any of these... Donal Noye served the Baratheons, he is a smith (like Gendry) and to me it would be more likely that he is related to the Baratheons than anyone in the north. Feels like a dead end. Borroq could be related to Craster perhaps, but it does not feel like it matters if he is :)

Yeah, probably just one of those rumors that springs up around shady characters. But the mention of slavers just struck me as a bit odd, as I think of north of the Wall as being all about the "free folk". The full quote is

That last part is intriguing, maybe the knowledge about the purpose of the sacrifices was known among the experienced rangers? That strikes me as odd since I would have expected them to prevent something like Craster's sacrifices... And slavery too if they knew about it. They could have chosen not to for practical reasons, he was an asset and informer I suppose. I'm sure I will wonder about this forever, who was his father?

[Eyron]

As I'm reading your response I had the same thought and d'oh moment that I mixed up the umber and mormont sign. I think I mentioned the br counterpoint, and with a patriarchal society that at least mistrusts magic its hard to go by how many legends speak of magic as to the male female splits, I still find it intriguing how few north women we see. I don't think asha is brought along because she's female, I'm much more curious about alysane. It not a well founded thought that she may be more mystical or knowledgeable than she appears, but that's my feel.

I dont have my thoughts fully formed yet, but the mormonts are major players, and I'm starting to get the feel that its not all by accident and coincidence.

Sorry, my addition of Bloodraven came after I finished writing the post and I had then forgotten you mentioned him.

I think that what you are saying about Alysane and women is true for the First Men in general, like the Mormonts, the Starks, the Blackwoods, and maybe more. But we can't be sure of course.

A reason for women to engage in sorcery could be the same as for those women who became nuns in medieval real world. That was their only way to educate themselves and become powerful, there were no other options to acheive this in the patriarchal society (if you were not a noble lady, but even those sometimes chose the monestary over marriage).

There are many northwomen that we don't see much of because our POVs are mostly out in field. There are Eddara Tallhart, Lady Cerwyn, Berena Hornwood, Wylis Manderlys wife (a Woolfield) and their daughters, Alys Karstark, Jeyne Pool, Beth Cassel, Robett Glover's wife (Locke by birth) and daughter, an Umber daughter that was stolen by wildlings, not to mention Lady Hornwood (Donella, though a Manderly by birth) and surely many unmentioned from lesser houses. They have no prominent roles but they are there. All in all it seems there could be more sons than daughters, but no strong evidence for it. And we are about to learnt more of the Stark women in the next Dunk & Egg novella. At some point in time there were several she-wolves, but we don't know what happened to them.

About men connected to magic, there are also Qyburn, Moquorro, all the factions in Qarth involved with the house of the undying, perhaps septon Barth long ago (rumor has it), and I would think Benerro is a sorcerer.

On a completely unrelated note: The Ghiscari have crypts beneath their mansions, for their dead. So them and the Starks are the only ones to do that, as far as I know. What is up with that?

[FanTasy]

On a completely unrelated note: The Ghiscari have crypts beneath their mansions, for their dead. So them and the Starks are the only ones to do that, as far as I know. What is up with that?

Jaime dreams about his dead forebearers, who I took from the text are laid to rest beneath Casterley Rock.

[FanTasy]

There are many northwomen that we don't see much of because our POVs are mostly out in field. There are Eddara Tallhart, Lady Cerwyn, Berena Hornwood, Wylis Manderlys wife (a Woolfield) and their daughters, Alys Karstark, Jeyne Pool, Beth Cassel, Robett Glover's wife (Locke by birth) and daughter, an Umber daughter that was stolen by wildlings, not to mention Lady Hornwood (Donella, though a Manderly by birth) and surely many unmentioned from lesser houses.

Ow .. good catch. I missed that she was Ser Wymans cousin.

Off topic :devil: One more reason why Manderley had not many scruples to serve his pies to the Boltons ... his cousin supposedly ate her own fingers because Ramsay wed her for her title and 'forgot' to feed her.

I have no doubt the Manderleys have some more surprises in store for Roose and Ramsay.

[Black Crow]

During the Dawn Age, Westeros was inhabited only by the Children, but 12,000 years ago the First Men arrived with horses and bronze weapons. Despite the breaking of the land-bridge to Essos a series of destructive wars followed with the Children getting the worst of it until “the wise of both races prevailed” and the Pact was forged on the island in God’s Eye. The Pact then lasted for 4,000 years through the Age of Heroes, the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms until the coming of the Andals, brought hundreds of years of war during which the six southern kingdoms were taken over by the Andals and from which the surviving Children fled north.

The Wiki puts the Long Night at 8,000 years ago and the coming of the Andals with their iron swords at 6,000 years ago, which by my feeble arithmetic would give us 2,000 years of war between the Children and the First Men, then 2,000 years for the Age of Heroes until the Long Night, and 2,000 more after it until the Andals turned up, during which 2,000 years the Seven Kingdoms were founded

There are another problems with this timeline, the first arising from what Sam discovers in the archives at Castle Black:

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed, and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian. I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

Unfortunately for him the late Ser Waymar Royce discovered that bit about their swords being cold enough to shatter steel back in the prologue to AGoT, but he was in the here and now. According to this, the Last Hero had a steel sword a whole 2,000 years before the Andals brought iron weapons to Westeros. Arguably a hero should have a suitably heroic sword when the stories are told long years afterwards, but that business of shattering steel clearly shows that men, presumably of the Watch, tried to use ordinary steel against the Walkers with discouraging results.

So do these particular stories date not from the Long Winter but from the Andal invasion 2,000 years later, and was the Battle for the Dawn the final victory of the Andals over the Children and the other Old Races?

You see there are other problems with the timeline when we move north of the Wall. Someone quite rightly enquired how Stark of Winterfell and Joruman of the Wildlings were able to unite against the Night’s King when the Wall lay between them.

I suggested in my earlier post that the Night’s King business may therefore predate the Wall and represented an attempt to grab some of the forest lands reserved to the Children, but there’s also a complication in the hunt for Joruman’s horn. We’re told early on that the Wildlings always burn their dead and soon learn that its because otherwise they rise up as Wights when the white gentlemen come riding by – which again suggests the Walkers have been around for a while and haven’t just popped up recently. Joruman and his people, however, are buried in real graves. So once again, just like the dragonglass gifts in the Age of Heroes does this mean that the Nights King business actually pre-dates the Long Night?

[Eyron]

Jaime dreams about his dead forebearers, who I took from the text are laid to rest beneath Casterley Rock.

Of course! I always forget the damn Lannisters... Intentionally perhaps?

Ow .. good catch. I missed that she was Ser Wymans cousin.

Off topic :devil: One more reason why Manderley had not many scruples to serve his pies to the Boltons ... his cousin supposedly ate her own fingers because Ramsay wed her for her title and 'forgot' to feed her.

I have no doubt the Manderleys have some more surprises in store for Roose and Ramsay.

That's what I think too, the important northern houses have reason to hate the Boltons, even their own bannermen! Roose was responsible for sending the northmen to Duskendale to be slaughtered, and Ramsay had many of them killed outside the gates of Winterfell when he tricked Rodrik Cassel. They are not popular, much like the Freys. And the north remembers :D

I keep trying to make sense out of the different magical forms by trying to find parallel forms between them. If the different forms of magic are really completely different, it isn't a valid approach. But if it is, maybe we should expand a bit.

Several posters (including me) have tried to draw parallels between the WW and the Magical Red Priests like Mel and Moqorro. (I'm quite sure there are lots of Red Priests that do little or no magic.) I've also tried to include that fire mage we saw in Qarth in the model. But the WW seem much more like warriors than mages or priests. And we know the CotF had both Greenseers and Wood Dancers. The parallels between the WW and the Wood Dancers seem to be particularly strong.

Perhaps we should be looking for both Magic Users and Warriors of each type. We have heard of Greenseers and Wood Dancers for the CotF (Earth-type magic). We've seen the WW, who are great ice-type warriors but we haven't seen them do any magic. Perhaps there are Ice Mages working with them, behind the front lines. We've seen Fire Mages, but we haven't heard of them engaging in battle- and that's surprising. A dude who can climb a fiery ladder should be able to kick some butt with a sellsword company. (Of course, he hasn't been very powerful until recently when magic started returning.) There should at least be legends. Or maybe there are.

AA might have been a Fire Warrior, not a priest or mage.

I love your thinking here.

Let's say this is correct, why is there only one fire-warrior (fire dancer?)?

Let's look at what animals they are connected to, the dragons, they are individualists or comes in three perhaps. If so there should be one or three AARs.

Go backwards in this reasoning and apply it to the Others, they "hunt in packs" (were there 6 in the prologue?). Well who else comes in packs of 6? Direwolves and Starks.

The Children are closely linked to the ravens, and they come in flocks, and the Children seem to live all together like a family, a flock of ravens.

[Eyron]

There are another problems with this timeline, the first arising from what Sam discovers in the archives at Castle Black:

“The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed, and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel. Fire will dismay them, though, and they are vulnerable to obsidian. I found one account of the Long Night that spoke of the last hero slaying Others with a blade of dragonsteel. Supposedly they could not stand against it.”

Unfortunately for him the late Ser Waymar Royce discovered that bit about their swords being cold enough to shatter steel back in the prologue to AGoT, but he was in the here and now. According to this, the Last Hero had a steel sword a whole 2,000 years before the Andals brought iron weapons to Westeros. Arguably a hero should have a suitably heroic sword when the stories are told long years afterwards, but that business of shattering steel clearly shows that men, presumably of the Watch, tried to use ordinary steel against the Walkers with discouraging results.

So do these particular stories date not from the Long Winter but from the Andal invasion 2,000 years later, and was the Battle for the Dawn the final victory of the Andals over the Children and the other Old Races?

Would the Andals not have noted that the Children were made of ice and their description from other sources did not match?

You see there are other problems with the timeline when we move north of the Wall. Someone quite rightly enquired how Stark of Winterfell and Joruman of the Wildlings were able to unite against the Night’s King when the Wall lay between them.

I suggested in my earlier post that the Night’s King business may therefore predate the Wall and represented an attempt to grab some of the forest lands reserved to the Children, but there’s also a complication in the hunt for Joruman’s horn. We’re told early on that the Wildlings always burn their dead and soon learn that its because otherwise they rise up as Wights when the white gentlemen come riding by – which again suggests the Walkers have been around for a while and haven’t just popped up recently. Joruman and his people, however, are buried in real graves. So once again, just like the dragonglass gifts in the Age of Heroes does this mean that the Nights King business actually pre-dates the Long Night?

Nice thinking! I was wondering about how the Stark in Winterfell and Joramun communicated the attack on the Night's Kind. Of course Joramun should at least predate the Wall, since they buried their men in barrows like the First Men. I can imagine that the Night's King never was completely defeated, and a Night's Watch (to watch out for the Night's King) was formed in the north. I have to think some more on this...

[Black Crow]

All the posts mentioning the similarity of the "leaf armor" of the CotF and the "ice armor" of the WW are very thought-provoking. There could be many different explanations for the similarity, but they seem to be parallel forms using different types of magic.

Craster doesn't have so much as one son hanging around, so I would guess he's given them all up, but the point linking the sacrificed sons and the upcoming winter is good. If indeed the WW are taking Craster's sons, there is no reason to believe that the WW had a donor previous to Craster. They might not have needed one until recently.

There's another similarity in their weapons; the Wood Dancers had weapons made of obsidian, a natural glass found in igneous rocks, while as for the White Walker who killed Royce:

"In its hand was a longsword like none Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

Diamonds are crystals found in igneous rocks, extremely sharp and not susceptible to shattering in intense cold.

[FanTasy]

Diamonds are crystals found in igneous rocks, extremely sharp and not susceptible to shattering in intense cold.

:cheers: Good thinking! I always thought the swords could be made out of meteors or something - "no human metal".

Diamond swords for beings connected with snow and ice - crystals.

Makes me think that there could be some other meaning for 'digging for treasures' by the members (no pun intended) of the Night's Watch.

It would be a mighty valuable find, a diamond sword.

[kissdbyfire]

If they skinchanged humans they would look more and more human... Maybe they have? Perhaps some of them can pass for humans now.

Yeah, and maybe some look like an albino dwarf... :dunno:

This is exactly where I am right now! I'm not sure who or why but, someone was definitely corrupted from wielding magic. In an earlier discussion on the subject I proposed that the First Men learned magic as a part of the deal when the pact was signed, but then used it for very bad purposes and the result was the Long Night.

I'm thinking that the Starks and the Children have a special status in this, maybe because it was one of their own, (part Child-part Stark person) that did it, and that is why they feel responsible for protecting the rest of the people from them. Like a constant moral counterweight to the manifestation of the worst part of themselves.

:agree: This is what I’ve been saying from the start, and so far I haven’t seen any evidence that disproves this theory. My pet theory regarding ‘the magic corrupting someone somehow’ is that men were corrupted by it, but I don’t think it was the Starks, I think it was the Boltons. This is not just wishful thinking – I’m sure there are dark secrets in the Starks’ past – but for this specifically, I like the Boltons. We know pretty much all the northerners dislike and don’t trust the Boltons; we know they’ve only bent the knee to the Starks some 1,000 years ago. We did talk about the possibility of the Boltons’ penchant for flaying having something to do with skinchanging, or their inability to do it. We a don’t know much about the house’s history, but I think it’s entirely possible that they were the First Men who were corrupted by the magic, tried to use it to their advantage and it blew in their faces – not only their faces but everyone’s. I have nothing to back this up, of course, but I think it may be more than wishful thinking... :eek:

[hotweaselsoup]

Nice thinking! I was wondering about how the Stark in Winterfell and Joramun communicated the attack on the Night's Kind. Of course Joramun should at least predate the Wall, since they buried their men in barrows like the First Men. I can imagine that the Night's King never was completely defeated, and a Night's Watch (to watch out for the Night's King) was formed in the north. I have to think some more on this...

I've been assuming that the Nightfort and the Night's King episode happened before the Wall was built (despite what the histories say), and in fact, the Wall may have been built in response to the Night's King and his actions.

Loosely, my theory involves the Night's King being a powerful skinchanger - probably a Stark - who made his seat at the Night's Fort. Old Nan describes his as a "warrior who knew no fear", which implies to me that he had some powerful ability which set him above ordinary men. I think his "pale woman" might have been a wildling woman - maybe a woods witch, but I don't necessarily think so - but I don't think she was a White Walker in the sense that we know them today, i.e. a being made of ice. I think our Night King pursued this woman and brought her back to the Night Fort. I think he fell in love with her, and I think she died somehow. Everything that happens next in the story - the ensorcelling of his men, the "corpse bride", the sacrificing - I think may have been the Night King going all Qyburn and trying to bring his dead lover back to life. I think also that the Others - the White Walkers - may have been the results of the Night King's mad experiments - Coldhands also, but he would have been a result from earlier in the process. Anyway, something like that! :drunk:

And regarding your statement that the Night's King was never completely defeated - I agree! And I also agree that the Night's Watch was formed, as you say, to watch for the Night's King and his return...

I was wondering, if the Night's King was in fact a Stark, would his bones be in the crypts of Winterfell? Is that what needs to be guarded, way down in the lower levels?

[kissdbyfire]

Loosely, my theory involves the Night's King being a powerful skinchanger - probably a Stark - who made his seat at the Night's Fort. Old Nan describes his as a "warrior who knew no fear", which implies to me that he had some powerful ability which set him above ordinary men.

As I read your post I remembered something I've listened to that's been bugging me for a while now. I was on a bike ride and couldn't take notes or highlight the passage, then later I forgot all about it. :bang:

I don't remember who said, I can't even remember in which book it is, I'm searching for it now. But someone, somewhere, says something along the lines of 'for all men must know fear' (paraphrasing). Now, could this have anything to do with the thing Old Nan says that you've quoted? I think it makes sense, it's unnatural not to feel fear, and as far as we can tell, whatever the NK was trying to accomplish, it wasn't 'natural'. I hope I can find the bit saying 'all men should know fear' to see in what context it's said...

[Black Crow]

As I read your post I remembered something I've listened to that's been bugging me for a while now. I was on a bike ride and couldn't take notes or highlight the passage, then later I forgot all about it. :bang:

I don't remember who said, I can't even remember in which book it is, I'm searching for it now. But someone, somewhere, says something along the lines of 'for all men must know fear' (paraphrasing).

Could it be the bit in AGoT Bran 1 where he has this conversation with Eddard, discussing the execution of Gared:

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him...

I have a feeling reference is made to this again later.