A Thread for Small Questions XIV

[Aenima]

do we know what happened with targaryen swords? bittersteel took blackfyre, but what happened with it, and where is dark sister?

[Northern]

Okay, another question that probably wouldn't come to mind if I had re-read these books: why do people mention lobsters when they're talking about Stannis? By people, I mean the fandom.

Bleed over from the show, where someone describes Stannis as 'having the personality of a lobster'.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

do we know what happened with targaryen swords? bittersteel took blackfyre, but what happened with it, and where is dark sister?

The Golden Company should still be in possession of Blackfyre. As for Dark Sister, I imagine that Bloodraven had to relinquish it when he went to the black cells. Who knows where it is.

[Aenima]

thanks

[Symon Silvertongue]

In a Melisandre chapter she mentions that she has gotten stronger after coming to the Wall. Why is she the only red priest there? It is an old religion and the wall has existed for 8000 years. Hard to believe she's the first to travel so far north and experience it.

[Buckwheat]

In a Melisandre chapter she mentions that she has gotten stronger after coming to the Wall. Why is she the only red priest there? It is an old religion and the wall has existed for 8000 years. Hard to believe she's the first to travel so far north and experience it.

R'hllor's religion did not have many believers before Melisandre came and Selyse and Stannis converted. I cannot think of any other R'hllorians apart from Thoros (and the BWB members converted later) and the ones converted by Melisandre in Westeros.

And even the priests of that cult who visited Westeros, why would they go to the Wall?

In the North, most people still follow the Old Gods, and at the Wall, there are many Southerners, so I imagine they follow the Seven. No particular reason why there would be a Red priest there.

[Fire_Kiss]

Sorry for another D&E question, but is Pennytree on the maps we have? I looked it up on the siki, searched all over the riverlands, but found no pennytree.

Am I blind or is it not there?

[Lord Beethoven the 9th]

In Dance with Dragons Pennytree is described as being in the disputed lands that the Brakens of Stone Hedge and the Blackwoods of Raventree fought over. After Jaime left Raventree he followed the Widow's Wash crossed it as spend the night in Pennytree.

There is a map on HBO's Game of Thrones site that shows Raventree to be north and sligtly east of Riverrun not quite half way to Oldstones. Stone Hedge is located striaght east of Riverrun on the south of the Riverroad and just east of High Heart. So that would put Pennytree between those two points.

http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/#!/locations/raventree-hall/

[teemo]

I am in a heated debate with someone over the Arya's New Look video, as shown here:

At the very end....one of us says, "So if you want to get Arya's look..." and one says "So if you want to get a garage look...." Can anyone clarify?

[kephv]

It's the first one -- Arya's.

[The Swaggering Bravo]

What are rushes?

[Jem]

What are rushes?

In what context do you mean rushes? If you mean on the floor, they are reeds, like bull-rushes I guess, used to keep the floor clean(ish) and warm(ish).

[Alia of the knife]

Technically speaking, the Berantheons were Valyrion as well, with their Ancestor being Aegons Bastard half-Brother and inner-marrying with the Targs. a time, or two.

But, it doesn't appear that they practiced incest.

So, was incest a Valyrion practice, or just a Targaryen practice?

[Ser Mon]

In DwD, when Arya was tasked to give her first "gift"

Did the kind man really took her face off? Because that's how I understood that part when she was asked to close her eyes and felt a quick pain then blood dripping over her face

If that's the case then it would be interesting to see her show her true identity (if she does at all) to dispute ramsay's wedding. Otherwise, what exactly was done to her?

[Alia of the knife]

In DwD, when Arya was tasked to give her first "gift"

Did the kind man really took her face off? Because that's how I understood that part when she was asked to close her eyes and felt a quick pain then blood dripping over her face

If that's the case then it would be interesting to see her show her true identity (if she does at all) to dispute ramsay's wedding. Otherwise, what exactly was done to her?

I understood it as she took on the "memory" and experience of the face that she took on, and since she has psychic capabilties, it may have been more intense.

[Ser Mon]

@Alia,

Thanks for the quick reply. :) But what about the blood?

[Jem]

In DwD, when Arya was tasked to give her first "gift"

Did the kind man really took her face off? Because that's how I understood that part when she was asked to close her eyes and felt a quick pain then blood dripping over her face

If that's the case then it would be interesting to see her show her true identity (if she does at all) to dispute ramsay's wedding. Otherwise, what exactly was done to her?

I think it was deliberately vague (either that or it is just a long time since I read it).

My impression was that Arya's face was cut around the edges and the other face was put over the top of her own face and where there were open cuts, the other face bonded onto Arya's own face. It is obviously some sort of blood magic where the FM needs to release their own blood for the dead face to be absorbed onto their own and for the memories to be absorbed as well.

After the job is done, I believe that the FM can easily release the false face, as we saw with J'aqin.

[Ser Mon]

I think it was deliberately vague (either that or it is just a long time since I read it).

My impression was that Arya's face was cut around the edges and the other face was put over the top of her own face and where there were open cuts, the other face bonded onto Arya's own face. It is obviously some sort of blood magic where the FM needs to release their own blood for the dead face to be absorbed onto their own and for the memories to be absorbed as well.

After the job is done, I believe that the FM can easily release the false face, as we saw with J'aqin.

Ah, that does sound better than what I had in mind. I didn't take into account the "magical" aspects of it. Aside from Dany's, Jon's and other POV's where magic is prominent (to some extent), when I read scenes like this, I treat it casually like it's no big deal. Probably why I love this series because it feels realistic and magic is only secondary.

Thanks, Jem!

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Technically speaking, the Berantheons were Valyrion as well, with their Ancestor being Aegons Bastard half-Brother and inner-marrying with the Targs. a time, or two.

But, it doesn't appear that they practiced incest.

So, was incest a Valyrion practice, or just a Targaryen practice?

Good question. I'm gonna take a stab at it and say that it was probably a Targaryen practice. The idea being, the Targs wanted to intermarry to retain their Valyrian features. But in Valyria, everyone in the major families would have had these features (I assume?), so there wouldn't be pressure to practice incest to retain them. In Westeros, there would be. I also subscribe to the idea that the "Baratheon" features as we know them are actually the Storm Kings' features, assimilated into the Baratheon line when Aegon's half-brother married the Storm King's daughter. In that case, incest in the Baratheon line to preserve Targ features might have been seen as useless, given that the Targ features would presumably always fall to the darker Storm Kings' features.

[Lady Octarina]

Pate's death - when I read AFFC, the prologue, for the first time, I assumed the FM had used some kind of magic to kill him, or stabbed him in the back, something like that. Re-reading it, I began to think it was the coin he bit, that maybe it had that FM poison and that's how he died. Which is correct?