Heresy 8

[Lady Olenna]

I don't think most readers assume Mel isn't human, to me it seems like most think she is older than she looks, but glamored, not undead or other than human.

I changes my av a week back I think, but I clicked my name at the top and then "'My settings" which was functioning then, and there you can edit your profile pic. You would have to get a Gravatar account, since that is the only option that works (at least when I tried it)

I suppose most readers wouldn't think Mel is undead now that I think about it. I just assumed that if I figured it out, it had to be pretty obvious (I seem to miss some of the most obvious subtleties). I pretty much thought that the Red Priests/Priestesses were all on some level undead (Thoros being an exception, possibly). But Uncat and Beric made it easy for me to make the connection that the Red lot are just as capable of creating Wights as the Others.

About the avatar... I have been trying for over a week to get into my settings and couldn't get past the SQL's for anything! When I saw you changed yours I thought maybe you had some Jedi computer whispering skills secret you could indulge me in! But alas, it worked last night and I finally got to put up the pic of Kristian Nairn (Hodor!) pretending to hold my son on his back. It always takes me a while to realize when people change their avatars. I was reading through the last few pages and was wondering where the little cardboard box moppet was!

I have to reread the part, but wasn´t Mance Rayder´s reaction, when the wildlings reached the Fist, something like, ah I wondered why we weren´t attacked by Wights and only then he accused Jon of lying about the NW numbers.

Ghost didn´t want to enter the ringwall, as if instinct told him not to, but he did when he led Jon to the obsedian cache. This does seem as if he´s been warged (I don´t like it he´s Jon´s to warg.).

I don't like it either. I was hoping it was Bran but we didn't see that from his POV at any time. Maybe BR or if Benjen is alive somewhere? Other than that I can't think of any other reason why Ghost would just all of a sudden go into the Fist when he refused to before. But if Ghost was in fact warged it was by someone that was trying to help Jon.

I know there are a lot of Mel fans out there, but she is the one character that I have not really enjoyed in the series. She reminds me of a succubous. Jon is possibly my favorite character - after Bran - so I get irrationally defensive in my mind when she constantly tries to attach herself to him. And it really bothered me that Ghost went to her. But it didn't bother me when Ghost went to Val (go figure). I suppose this is because Mel forced the Wildlings to sacrifice to her God and forsake the Old Gods in order to basically survive. In the back of my mind I keep thinking that she will pay for that at some point. I was reading some other threads about Mel and it seems I am in the outcast opinion, she seems to have a lot of fans.

[Eyron]

I suppose most readers wouldn't think Mel is undead now that I think about it. I just assumed that if I figured it out, it had to be pretty obvious (I seem to miss some of the most obvious subtleties). I pretty much thought that the Red Priests/Priestesses were all on some level undead (Thoros being an exception, possibly). But Uncat and Beric made it easy for me to make the connection that the Red lot are just as capable of creating Wights as the Others.

First I thought that she was very very old and used glamor (which made me cringe when she wanted Jon to make an unholy union). But after her POV I figured that she was not alive anymore, or on the very edge of becoming non-human. When Apple Martini pointed out the similarities to the White Walker queen of the Night's King (in some other thread), it felt quite clear to me. But many don't think so at all.

About the avatar... I have been trying for over a week to get into my settings and couldn't get past the SQL's for anything! When I saw you changed yours I thought maybe you had some Jedi computer whispering skills secret you could indulge me in! But alas, it worked last night and I finally got to put up the pic of Kristian Nairn (Hodor!) pretending to hold my son on his back. It always takes me a while to realize when people change their avatars. I was reading through the last few pages and was wondering where the little cardboard box moppet was!

Nice picture! What a sweet little boy (your son :laugh:) and Kristian seems like a very nice bloke. I think the Danbo (the cardboard box moppet) will return later on, but Wednesday is adorable too, I change my av a lot...

I don't like it either. I was hoping it was Bran but we didn't see that from his POV at any time. Maybe BR or if Benjen is alive somewhere? Other than that I can't think of any other reason why Ghost would just all of a sudden go into the Fist when he refused to before. But if Ghost was in fact warged it was by someone that was trying to help Jon.

My suggestion is that it was Benjen, since the Old Bear was talking about him finding them earlier on to Jon. Benjen would find them or their trail he told Jon, since their fires up on the hill could be seen from most of the north. A little bit of foreshadowing perhaps.

The cloak was new so it had been buried there recently. I wrote something about it earlier, about how Ghost was sniffing the air and sniffing Jon and then he took off to the woods and looked to see that Jon was following him. So I think whoever left the obsidian had a smell that was familiar to Jon's so Ghost knew it was someone in the family, a Stark I assume, and he would know Benjens smell quite well.

I know there are a lot of Mel fans out there, but she is the one character that I have not really enjoyed in the series. She reminds me of a succubous. Jon is possibly my favorite character - after Bran - so I get irrationally defensive in my mind when she constantly tries to attach herself to him. And it really bothered me that Ghost went to her. But it didn't bother me when Ghost went to Val (go figure). I suppose this is because Mel forced the Wildlings to sacrifice to her God and forsake the Old Gods in order to basically survive. In the back of my mind I keep thinking that she will pay for that at some point. I was reading some other threads about Mel and it seems I am in the outcast opinion, she seems to have a lot of fans.

:agree: completely.

I don't get the love for Mel at all, she creeps me out. She is a brutal missionary with a homicidal streak, she burns people for political and religious reasons, and she is hiding behind magic and glamor. She wants to make shadowbabies with Stannis and Jon, so they can murder other people, and the creation of those babies suck the life out of the man she "joins" with, drains them of the flame of life or whatever. :ack:

I've read such weird things about how she is helping Jon, so they should totally get it on... :stillsick: Well that is not good enough reason for me I'm afraid, and she is not helping Jon for crying out loud, she is helping her own cause, she is a murderer and a zealot, just no.

The only thing that makes me think she is not completely evil is that she seems to actually believe that she is fighting for a good cause, that her burning people and forcing her religion on them is for their own good and what will save the world. She is a stupid horrible woman, but I don't think she is evil down to the bone, more like a indoctrinated person. There is also a chance that she is playing a game that we don't fully know yet, in which case she probably is more evil than I imagine ;)

[lokisnow]

The cache Jon finds is new, the earth is soft and mounded, and he thinks when he pulls it out that it can't have been buried long because the cloth is not decayed.

Ghost doesn't come into the fist, Jon leaves the ringwall (I don't remember but I think Jon sees Ghosts eyes just beyond their firering at the edge of the ringwall). And then Ghost basically does a Lassie and leads Jon to the cache of weapons.

And I don't think it was ever a fort, I think that's just what The Night's Watch sees because that's what the Night's Watch expects to see when they see a stone structure on a high hill. The primary structure there is not a wall so much as it is an encircling series of tall plinths that Jon likens to faces when he first sees them. Gravestones, perhaps?

***

Pretty much unrelated, but in GRRM's commentary, during the first Mormont scene, George comments that there is a character missing here, a controversial character, Mormont's Raven. He then says that some of his readers hate the raven, and some love it, he describes the Raven as Very Old and says he's not sure yet if we'll see the Raven in future seasons. George also discusses the wights by their names as Watchmen he doesn't seem to think of them as generic, and notes how clever Jon is to intuit that fire will stop them.

Read into that what you will, fellow heretics.

***

And regarding the pure evilness of any character/faction... Benioff and Weiss mention in one of the special features that their mantra is "Absolutely No Bad Guys", and since this comes only a minute or two after they mention how lucky they are to know the entire story and how it ends that makes me think that the White Walkers are at the moment very poorly comprehended by us the readers. Right now they are Jaime in AGOT territory, maybe soon we'll discover there's more to them and get a Jaime in ASOS sort of thematic revelation.

***

I think the Children, Walkers and Giants are all related... I think there's a lot more textual suggestion that Children and Walkers are intertwined than that the Walkers and Watch are intertwined. I'm more inclined to the theory that the Walkers are the nonhuman version of the Night's Watch. but that would also imply that the Walkers are about as connected to Leaf, Bloodraven et al as Mormont and Jon are connected to Tommen and Varys.

[Lady Olenna]

At the risk of a very long post of quotes I will just say that I completely agree with you Eira. I really like the idea that Ghost picked up the scent of some Stark and brought Jon to that scent. That is a more comforting thought than Ghost being warged. I didn't make the connection that the cloak was new so it could have been Benjen when he passed by the area. Whoever left it may have recognized that the Fist was place of importance for the WW and left the stash there to help the next person. Although my issue(s) with that is that it is either completely random or it was left by someone that knew of Jon's coming. I always struggle with anything random in the books because GRRM just doesn't leave things to coincidence.

Or are you suggesting that Benjen is alive and saw the NW coming and buried the stash before they arrived? I hadn't thought about that possibility until just now.

[Lady Olenna]

@Lockesnow: Was the commentary part of the DVD or found somewhere online? I would enjoy watching it. I wanted to wait to purchase any DVDs until the finale but now I might just have to, darn it.

[Eyron]

lockesnow, As far as I remember Ghost did come to Jon on the fist, I may have to reread that again, but there was a discussion on this earlier and after that reread, it was concluded that he did. ETA: at first he didn't want to go there, but he came back to fetch Jon to show him the bundle.

Lady Olenna, I think Benjen could be alive, of sorts. ;) At least I don't think the obsidian and the horn was left there by accident, I think someone left it to be found, I assume it was supposed to be found by the Night's Watch. I can imagine that the Fist was the place of exchange of obisidian long ago when the Children gave the Watch a hundred pieces every year. We have to remember that the greenseer can see more than the past and the present, they can see glimpses of future too, so BR or Bran could have seen Jon there or going there.

I think those things Jon found are going to prove very important, and more important than just as a weapon to kill white walkers with.

[Uncat]

Quote doesn't work somehow. Referes to post #270 of Nymeria Star-Eyes

The thing with getting focused: Cathelines last thought and even more her last act is revenge. In this act she is cought by death. Beric was fighting the Mountain as a King's man. He got stuck in this: I am a kings man. I have to deliver justice. Two is not much of a proof, but it suggests, that the UnXxx somehow get stuck in the last thing they were acting about. Beric even describes it. Anything else is fading or, if you tunr this arround, only the one thing is left.

On a sidenote. The interesting thing is: as far as Toros was concerned, the kiss of fire is a kind of last sacrament, a rhytus to send a dead man on his way. He was as surprised as Beric, when Beric came back to live. And such dying rythes usualy are at the very core of a religion. This supports the idea, that the bringing people back business belongs to the fundation of the cult of R'hollor. Every priest learns the tecnique in a way, that it works, when circunstances are right.

And a last thought on a difference between the Uns and the wights. Beric has a lot of blood to spill, when the Hound kills him. As he is dead a long time now and was killednseveral times, the should be no blood left. And very important. He has no black hands. Also, the wounds seem to heal in a way. Arya sees the spear wound. She notes, that it is terrible, but is seems to have scarred. So the Uns seem to have some kind of metabolims going on inside them, while the wights are the way they died

[ghost the direwolf]

Ghost does come to the fist.

[Eyron]

Ghost does come to the fist.

If anyone knows it's you right ;)

[Uncat]

Quotes still not working. This referes to 279, Lummel searching for colors

Lummel, if you are searching for color patterns, you might want to consider the house of Black and White. If the faceless man came into being as antagonists to the red ones, this ties them into the the core of the series. So maybe it is worth to have another look on their colors. Black and White as in the Black Brotherhood of the Night's Watch and the White Rangers (to pick a Black Crows idea about them). Or black and white as in the sworn black brothers protecting the Nights Kings and the white brothers protecting the ... hummm ... day's king. And the we have the snowy white temple of the Moon Singers in Braavos, which is right in front of the Red Temple im Braavos.

[Lummel]

I don't know Uncat. Truly it might just be a foolishness of mine. GRRM spends a lot of the book associating colours with families or with groups, but then again I don't think we are meant to think that the Lannisters and the R'hlloristas are part of the same pride of lions.

The house of black and white suggests to me a simplistic world outlook. But we could take that idea of the kingsguard and the nights watch and ask what do all three groups have in common? Service, duty and self denial...Preparedness to die as well I think.

[Black Crow]

The primary structure there is not a wall so much as it is an encircling series of tall plinths that Jon likens to faces when he first sees them. Gravestones, perhaps?

Or a stone circle like Stoke Penge?

And regarding the pure evilness of any character/faction... Benioff and Weiss mention in one of the special features that their mantra is "Absolutely No Bad Guys", and since this comes only a minute or two after they mention how lucky they are to know the entire story and how it ends that makes me think that the White Walkers are at the moment very poorly comprehended by us the readers...

Roll on my birthday, the DVD set and the special features :drool:

As to the rest I wholeheartedly agree. Its why I'm a heretic and why I expect an ending worthy of GRRM. Waiting for two more books is a pain, but he's been building to something astonishing which is just starting to peep out of the woodwork and I want him to develop it properly.

[alienarea]

Or a stone circle like Stoke Penge?

Roll on my birthday, the DVD set and the special features :drool:

As to the rest I wholeheartedly agree. Its why I'm a heretic and why I expect an ending worthy of GRRM. Waiting for two more books is a pain, but he's been building to something astonishing which is just starting to peep out of the woodwork and I want him to develop it properly.

It's a trap!

I can't think of a scenario for Ramsay that goes together with "absolutely no bad guys".

[Black Crow]

Ramsay's an irritant who's going to get what's coming to him like Vargo Hoat. I take this to refer to the major issues and character.

[Elaena Targaryen]

I agree that it's likely that Benjen left the dragonglass for Jon to find, If something has happened to him and he's different now then Benjen would not be able to just walk up the Fist and say hello brothers. This could connect to why Ghost was sketchy if he knew Benjen was out there some where and Jon was kinda safe on the Fist, but I still think there is something else going on there and they were not supposed to be on the Fist maybe.

With Mel and Moqorro I think they are similar to the un's or not totaly alive. Maybe more like an immortal but not totaly similar maybe. I think Thoros is different because he did not join the red priests as a slave really. His family gave him to the red priests but I don't think that's quite the same, not to mention he was never the most pious. (I wonder if the only accept children into the priesthood, it seems likely) I think there is some kind of ritual performed, and maybe only with the slaves or most devout, and this is how they move up the ladder, and it involves making them into something that's not quite "alive." Maybe they are different than the un's because it was not done to "save" their life and they were not dead or dying when it happened, so they retain more humanity and this happens when they are fervently worshiping R'hllor so that is what they are "stuck" doing ever after. (like Beric and Cat, their final mission) It's the perfect way to ensure loyalty in their followers if they do this with ones who are zealots anyway, best to use young slaves right.

I'm curious about the same thing as UnCat with the differences in the wights and the un's. Maybe it's a more personal experience with the kiss and not with the cold mist. Maybe it's the type of magic, even if they are all connected somehow. Fire consumes and ice preserves but maybe it's not the same with resurections. Heat gives life and cold suspends life (or something?) Maybe I'm way off track?

[Jojen]

Touching on things that Black Crow, Uncat, and Lummel have been saying, I want to go back to the theory that the Seven may have sprung from worship of the Red God. Uncat mentioned the House of Black and White. Among the 30 statues there is The Stranger, who is one of the Seven. The Stranger could have evolved from the shadowy side of R'hllor.

But what if Bakkalon, for instance, was also a kind of proto-R'hllor? As I've suggested in the thread about the original faith of the First Men, it's possible that the First Men were burning weirwoods in Westeros (and perhaps in Essos prior to their migration--or whatever it was that drove them across the Arm of Dorne) out of religious duty, just as Mel burned the godswood at Storm's End. I'm not saying the First Men worshipped Red Rahloo as Mel, Benerro, and Moqorro do, or that their conception of him is the same as the Red Lot's. I'm just putting it out there that what they may have originally worshipped evolved over time into the Red God we all know and love (to hate) today. I'm just not sure exactly how the Children managed to convert them.

And speaking of the Children and their reference to the Giants as being both their brothers and their bane, I think it's also possible that by destroying the weirwoods, the Giants maybe rebelled against the Children and began working with, and for, the First Men, learning their language and forgetting the song of the earth, and helping in the construction of places like Storm's End and perhaps Moat Cailin, maybe as a long-forgotten condition of the Pact.

[Lady Olenna]

Or a stone circle like Stoke Penge?

Roll on my birthday, the DVD set and the special features :drool:

I can't tell if you're joking but just in case I missed your birthday - Happy Birthday!!

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

And I don't think it was ever a fort, I think that's just what The Night's Watch sees because that's what the Night's Watch expects to see when they see a stone structure on a high hill. The primary structure there is not a wall so much as it is an encircling series of tall plinths that Jon likens to faces when he first sees them. Gravestones, perhaps?

I was thinking something along those lines, a sacred site.

What if that was a site for human sacrifice? If not to the Old Gods, perhaps to the Others? Possible connection between the blood sacrifices to the Old Gods we've become aware of and Craster's sacrifice of all male infants?

Craster's sacrifices seem to gain him a significant degree of immunity to WW/Wight interest... when falling back from the fist, wights/WW's attacked the Watch before they got to craster's and after they left crasters, but not while they were at crasters. Could it be that what we and the Northerners alike view as sacrifices to the Old Gods were actually derived from sacrifices to the WW's?

As I've said.. I believe the key to understanding the WW's is Craster's sons... what becomes of them? How was the arrangement reached? How long has it been going on? If it's been going on for as long as Craster's been there, have the WW's been awake much longer than we have been led to believe?

Though it's just as likely that Craster always took his sons out into the woods as a 'sacrifice', and the WW's happened upon that when they recently awoke, and find Craster's steady source of newborn males more important than destroying Craster's keep.

He think's he's a Godly man, and it seems to me that sacrificing his sons is the chief sacrament of his 'religion'. He may be closer to the mark than he knows?

[lokisnow]

Some textual stuff, cause we must needs quote, chapter and verse:

This first is the quote for something I mentioned above, which is that Old Nan names morning mists the spirits of the dead. So there is assuredly a connection between mist and death/underworld/undead.

Renly's battles were already coming apart as the rumors spread from mouth to mouth. The nightfires had burned low, and as the east began to lighten the immense mass of Storm's End emerged like a dream of stone while wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. And Renly one of them now, gone like his brother Robert, like her own dear Ned.

Yes, it is a wall atop the fist, I misremembered:

The way up was steep and stony, the summit crowned by a chest-high wall of tumbled rocks. They had to circle some distance west before they found a gap large enough to admit the horses

The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall that drew Jon’s eye, the weathered grey stones with their white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss

I was wrong, Jon doesn’t quite think of them as faces, I misremembered because of the beard terminology.

They cut down trees, dig ditches and latrines, stake the ground, and clear brush. So they change the landscape a lot in a few hours.

Jon mentions the lack of water, which from my point of view would have made the Fist an extremely poor fort (nearly useless in fact) in the Dawn Age.

Once he’d put up the Lord Commander’s tent and seen to their horses, Jon Snow descended the hill in search of Ghost. The direwolf came at once, all in silence. One moment Jon was striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting, alone in the green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet, the next, the great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning mist.

Again, I was wrong, this is what I was thinking of, but later, Ghost does come into the camp to fetch Jon.

There is a ton of interesting imagry in this chapter of forest and mountain, Martin clearly contrasts them, and sets up some internal parallels within the internal monolog of how Jon describes things, and he’s also playing off what we just learned about mist from Catelyn in the previous chapter. Ghost gets some very Ghostly imagry. The raven calls the place Old and Dead (or the Raven tries to tell them Benjen is Dead, take your pick, they’re talking about Benjen being Dead when the Raven goes nuts on that word).

Yet as the dusk deepened and the darkness seeped into the hollows between the trees, Jon’s sense of foreboding grew. This is the haunted forest, he told himself. Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First Men. This was their place, once.

…

Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled… When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.

Now that quote could put an interesting spin on Patch Face’s Under the Sea dittys. Also note that this sea imagry fits in with the soon to come attack on Winterfell by the Sea. Jon has enormous foreboding at this point that they are about to be attacked, and especially that Ghost is not safe in the forest tonight. Jon stands an unasked for sunset watch at the ringwall, he is so wrapped up in his unease.

Here’s a truly interesting flag, the ravens hate the place and are loud and raucous, Jon thinks that they feel it too, more significantly

Jon heard the ravens before he saw them. Some were calling his name.

That seems pretty clear to me to be someone trying to Warn Jon (probably Bran) about the dangers of staying at the fist. The ravens were calling his name before they saw him or he saw them. Fascinating…

Jon meets Dywen and some men at the fire, Dywen says the forest is especially dangerous tonight, that it smells cold and Jon thinks that the smell of Cold smells like death. It is a moonless night, only starlight above them. Jon returns to his fire, Ghost shows up and Jon thinks immediately about the attack of the wights. Jon follows Ghost in the dark down the hill.

The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf, deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the hill. Black, they seemed… it was only when his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of green.

This is one of those little literary descriptive parallels I mentioned, the trees seem to be Black but then are revealed to be green, The cloak the knives are wrapped in seems to be dark until it is revealed to be Black.

Btw, the description here is fascinating, it is as though the forest itself is fighting Jon as he follows Ghost, lots of antagonistic descriptions of Jon fighting against nature. And note all the martial imagry and implied agency the trees get in this chapter.

Jon finds the cache, thinks it is a grave (and perhaps it is, Benjen’s grave, metaphorically), and then thinks he has found ‘treasure’. As it turns out, the cache truly is buried treasure. Jon wonders if it is some thousand year old cache, but debunks this twice in how he determines it was recently buried and notes that the cloak had not had time to rot.

I think an attack on the Watch ALMOST happened that very first night. Not of wights, but of White Walkers. There are a lot of textual clues that they are about this night, and it's a new moon, so they can hide further from light when there is only starlight. The just arrived men are unprepared and ripe targets. some defenses have been mounted but nothing compared to the robust defenses the old bear outlines in the chapter. At this point, the Ranging has yet to reach its full strength. The Walkers seemingly have little to fear from men--until Jon uncovers then arms the Watch with the nuclear weapon of dragonglass. I think Ghost (and possibly others, Bloodraven or Bran) managed to stave off a devastating attack that night.

Once the Watch had dragonglass, The Walkers were in a less safe position, so I think they retreated, and began to assemble a wight herd to attack the fist for them, since wights need not fear dragonglass.

[Uncat]

On the House of Black and White: I like to take this pattern for an expression of a kind of digital thinking about death. As far as the cult of this temple is concerned, there are only two posibilities. A man is either alive or dead. There is no inbetween. No messing around with raising or resurection of the dead. In relation to this, the saying of "All men must die" gets three meanings. First, it is a rule of nature. ALL men live and then die to be dead. Second of all it is a promise, tied to the founding myth of the faceless men: All men must die and that we promise to you, who seeks an end to your suffering, to be true. And third of all it is a fundamental law, that must not be broken: All men MUST die, period. No exeptions, no raising. Life must be black and white. Dead or alive and nothing else.

And the faceless men seem to have taken up the duty to enforce it at any cost. If Arya had persisted on "Jaqhar" as the third name, he had surly killed himself, even though he absolutly wanted to live. And obviously the faceless god does not acept technicalities (e.g. Jaqhar changing his face and his name thus stopping to be Jaqhar). He new Arya meant "the man I know as Jaqhar reguardless of which name he uses and which men he is impersonating" and he was convinced, that his manyfaced god understood this very well, leaving no loophole for him.

I'll go a little deeper into this faceless business, as soon as I get the chance. If this series is about live and death, then the faceless men belong to its core plot line.