Heresy 8

[Lummel]

..."This," he said reverently, "is the account of a journey from the Shadow Tower all the way to Lorn Point on the Frozen Shore, written by a ranger named Redwyn. It’s not dated, but he mentions a Dorren Stark as King in the North, so it must be from before the Conquest. Jon, they fought giants! Redwyn even traded with the children of the forest, it’s all here." Ever so delicately, he turned pages with a finger.

So there was fighting with the giants and trading with the children so they were still on good terms whenever this was. I find it curious the the King of the North took a journey like this with the NW as well...

It doesn't mean that the king of north went with them probably just that this adventure happened during the time that Dorren Stark was King (not so exciting I'm afraid). Like you say we don't know when this was, there was a lot of time before the conquest.

[Black Crow]

Once I would have agreed with you,(Sword of Mid Afternoon) but having read again that bit about Thistle, I'm now not so sure. I think that the Wights are the same as those dead raised up by Fire.

The point about both Beric and Cat is that they don't really have free will. They have a sense of identity and awareness but Beric is or rather was still compelled to carry out his mission, while Cat is out to kill anything and anyone connected with the Lannisters. There was a difference between them insofar as Beric was more aware of what was going on because he had originally been kissed while he was dying rather than dead, while Cat was turned into a Wight some time afterwards and consequently not just hacked about but rotted as well.

What I'm suggesting on the basis of the ADwD prologue is that the cold wights are the same. Those freshly killed, like Thistle do know who they are and can see and still think, while the rotted ones are a bit further down the road so to speak. The question really is whether they have been given a specific mission, as Othor and Jafer were (kill) or Small Paul (collect Craster's son), or a more general "up and at 'em" and are they now wandering at a bit of a loose end without a purpose?

[jon rr stark]

How about there was no wall. After all how did Jorumon (spelling?) and the Stark in winterfell communicate with the wall and the NK between them. Maybe the wall came after or at least the wall that we see now. Hence Jorumon has a horn that was used in the building of the wall to divide the north into two lower half for starks upper half for wildlings.

[Uncat]

Once I would have agreed with you,(Sword of Mid Afternoon) but having read again that bit about Thistle, I'm now not so sure. I think that the Wights are the same as those dead raised up by Fire.

The point about both Beric and Cat is that they don't really have free will. They have a sense of identity and awareness but Beric is or rather was still compelled to carry out his mission, while Cat is out to kill anything and anyone connected with the Lannisters. There was a difference between them insofar as Beric was more aware of what was going on because he had originally been kissed while he was dying rather than dead, while Cat was turned into a Wight some time afterwards and consequently not just hacked about but rotted as well.

What I'm suggesting on the basis of the ADwD prologue is that the cold wights are the same. Those freshly killed, like Thistle do know who they are and can see and still think, while the rotted ones are a bit further down the road so to speak. The question really is whether they have been given a specific mission, as Othor and Jafer were (kill) or Small Paul (collect Craster's son), or a more general "up and at 'em" and are they now wandering at a bit of a loose end without a purpose?

Uncat very much agrees. The Lightning Lord complaines to Thoros, that almost nothing of the man he was remains. And Uncat, well she is a littlebit of an narrowminded monster. The people arround them may percive them as acting on their own. But it looks much more as if something / someone took over and is acting through them. If you ger hold of a great computer you can have him perform stupid tasks like brute force attacs ore you can have him run very complicated operations that would involve even some A.I.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

The similarities are there... but the fact that Dondarrion is aware of the fact that he's lost senses, feelings, some memories....the wights seem little more than zombies seeking brains... but in this case they seek warm blood.

When I read the "She sees me" Thistle bit, I imagined her recognizing Varamyr's wolf the way Othor recognized the Lord Commander's Tower.

Mssrs. Crow, UnCat & Lummel, you each make compelling arguments. I just can't make the connection betwixt Wights & Dondarrion/UnCat.... Perhaps with UnCat the connection becomes far more plausible.... but even so, Cat's out to avenge the Red Wedding but the wights behave more like crazed starved animals seeking meat... We've seen Dondarrion hold conversations, exercise free will, and otherwise perform advanced cognitive functions... aside from Coldhands, I don't think wights can even talk. If asked "who are you?", Dondarrion would answer "Lord Beric", If a wight was asked, it would try to rip out your intestines.

.I'm curious as to whether they would've ripped apart Gilly's babe or taken it somewhere. I think it wouldve been ripped apart, but I may be wrong. I haven't read or listened to that chapter in a long while, but it's rapidly approaching in my audiobook

There is no doubt that the whitewalkers want/need male infants... they were willing to keep Craster alive, so long as he gave 'em all the boys.... I wonder what they could possibly do with them.

[Uncat]

Well, Dondarrion says himself, that he can recite the facts - and even those are slipping him - but he is loosing the meaning of the facts. He can tell you, that he is Lord Dondarrion. But he himself claims that he is loosing the sens of what that means. It is, what I have tryed to tell by the computer examle. You can have an iphone with his computing power what ever you want. It can just fart whenever you grab it. Or you can make it run Siri, which gives a quite interresting simulation of personality. And Coldhands would exactly be my proof for this: In his whole description he is a whight. Only he acts like one of the unpeople. After all it would again fit into the idea that there is only one magic and it all depends on what you do with it. In this case the difference would be how much ressurection you need. Flesh and bone only or brains, too? And on what degree of liberty you conceede your creation. What Thoros does is obviously aimed as a complete ressurection of the person. He or she who is resurrecting those wights, for now did not need more then an army of undead killers inspiring terror on who ever comes across them.

[lokisnow]

Although the text does state that the blades of the vanquished were used to forge the Iron Throne, this does not necessarily mean the actual swords of the foes vanquished in combat. As the Throne itself is a physical representation of a King's high seat, perhaps the blades that were given to forge it were given more in ceremony? I am thinking... how many thousands were vanquished? Upon the field of fire, if everything was set ablaze and smouldering, wouldn't those swords have simply melted into puddles of slag to harden on the earth?

I believe the swords were more ceremonial than aught else - and with all the other descriptions of the Iron Throne we have at hand (all the barbs, jagged swords still sharp after countless centuries) indeed, it is reputed that Valyrian Steel holds its edge remarkably well... but again, it seems some sort of magic was used to forge the Iron Throne, being that dragons are creatures of some sort of "magic". I do think that if there was Valyrian Steel on the Iron Throne, then some mention would have been made of it at some point. With all the other little details GRRM likes to throw into the stories to further the history and imagination for his readers, I simply can't believe he wouldn't include a snippet like that. With the symbolic representation of a (possible) set number of Valyrian blades, I do like the thought that they were originally given to the Great Houses of the land of Westeros prior to their being conquered by dragonfire. The "one ring to rule them all" theory does sound juicy here, but I don't think there is any inherent magic in that action itself, more a symbol. If you refer to FULL inscription "One ring to rule them all - One ring to find them - One ring to call them home and in the Darkness bind them" doesn't really seem to apply here, at least not in that depth. It seems the Iron Throne was not to hold or seize their power, but only representing all those who submitted to the rule of the Iron Throne.

As others have said, why salt the wounds of your recently conquered enemies? We are talking about Targaryens here - not Joffrey Lannister! Again, the blades were ceremonial - it wouldn't matter if it was the grand sword of the house, another held in antiquity, or a freshly-forged blade from a Castle's weaponsmith. The symbolism of the blade turned over to the new High King to forge his throne would be the same.

...

Maybe someone has some ideas or insight? I know this is the Heresy thread, but those items popped to mind, and put me in the question of in fact whether or not these "sacred" and "ancient" swords purported to have come from the brimstone ruins of Valyria pre-doom are in fact what they say they are or not. It simply ties in to previous statements and thoughts. :)

If symbols were good enough for Magic, Dany would only have to symbolically step into the fire, symbolically burn drogo etc to hatch the eggs.

Symbols are a real world way of representing magic, in many ways, Wedding rings are a good example, a symbol of a magical bonding of two into one.

If you exist in a world with magic, symbols are not going to be good enough, if real magic is involved, it has to be the real thing.

The Iron Throne is pretty heavily implied to be magical, as though it has a personality. And hell, it is right there in the name of the damned chair Iron Throne. Iron.

I like the idea of Aegon handing out the valyrian swords, but I don't think it is quite right.

I think the valyrian swords came to westeros 400 years ago. Remember the doom of Valyria was 400 years ago, and the Targaryens fled to Westeros. The Targaryens lived at Dragon stone for 100 years before invading. What were they doing there? They were probably striving to return to Valyria and financing their continued existence (Stannis complains that Dragonstone has almost no incomes from its vassal lands) with the Valyrian swords they'd brought with them. (it'd be amusing if the targaryens were lowly blacksmiths on Valyria, heh, who established Dragonstone as a merchant outpost). I think for a hundred years the Targaryens were trading with westeros, most of the noble houses bought a blade for themselves. The wealthiest of the houses, Lannister and Stark and Gardener, probably bought the finest blades, and the poorer houses, like Baelish, probably bought nought but a dagger. Ironically, by buying weapons from the Targaryens, Westeros eventually funded the small invading force Aegon used against the continent.

***

couple things I've noted.

First Night we have been presuming to be the same as in Braveheart. What if it has transformed into that, but was once what The Wildlings do. The husband must catch the wife on the First Night, but other men could too. Typically the prospective Husband would find her, because he and his beloved would have arranged where she goes, but sometimes the lord or another man would find her, perhaps because she wants him to find her, or perhaps because the lord was a great hunter and tracker, or because the lord had a horse and the peasants didn't. The point is that First Night in westeros could have been a wedding ceremony, of sorts, the woman has all the night, and then is 'hunted' by the men at first light. What we see Ramsey doing, or what Ygritte or Roose describe are all bastardizations of the old ways.

And worth noting that what Rhaegar did to Lyanna seems to conform with the old ways as described by Ygritte, I imagine in the next book we'll see their wedding in front of the heart tree of winterfell. So this is possibly all quite wrong.

Also worth noting that what Ygritte describes conforms pretty much exactly with the Salt Wives of the Ironborn, and has similarities to some of what Tyrion learns from the mountain clansmen.

***

Regarding Whitetree: The context of the massive tree is that the wildlings of Whitetree burned their dead in the hollow of the tree. I think this still works as a better explanation for the skulls than retconning it into human sacrifices. we don't really have any evidence that the wildlings maintain human sacrifices. We do KNOW that wights really want blood. Perhaps it is not to eat, zombie like, that's just us readers making dumb assumptions based on other fictional universes, perhaps they want blood to slake the thirst of the old gods for blood sacrifices that have not been given? I think burning the dead in the tree conforms as a bastardization of what we learned in Bran's ADWD chapters, of an attempt to get the dead into the tree to live on in the weirwood memory bank.

***

Osha surprises Bran in one of his ACOK chapters, she emerges suddenly from the pool below the hearttree. She said she was trying to find the bottom. I wonder if she was trying to find a secret passage beneath the water to access whatever is underneath the great weirwood of winterfell.

[lokisnow]

Fun heresy I just thought of that combines a lot of cracked pots into a really big crackpot.

AA and the Last Hero are one and the same, AA and his dragon lightbringer (which he hatched by burning Nissa Nissa) hunted down the COTF/WW to their stronghold/capitol. On that site they forged a pact. AA would sacrifice his dragon, and the COTF would sacrifice their lands to retreat north, so long as no dragons ever came beyond the border they would create (the Wall), and the Dragon would be buried there and a weirwood would be planted in the Dragon and AA to mark the site and the Pact. the combination of dragon and tree would be a song of fire and ice.

that place is where the Great Winter Ended, Where Winter Fell. And a great castle was raised atop the burial mound of the dragon and Tree, Winterfell.

[Lummel]

With regard to Whitetree it is more likely that the bodies are burnt separately and the remainders are put in the hollow of the tree than that they are burnt in the tree. Unless the hollow in the tree was very big and ideally asbestos lined using the tree as a crematorium would kill it.

[Black Crow]

The similarities are there... but the fact that Dondarrion is aware of the fact that he's lost senses, feelings, some memories....the wights seem little more than zombies seeking brains... but in this case they seek warm blood.

When I read the "She sees me" Thistle bit, I imagined her recognizing Varamyr's wolf the way Othor recognized the Lord Commander's Tower.

Mssrs. Crow, UnCat & Lummel, you each make compelling arguments. I just can't make the connection betwixt Wights & Dondarrion/UnCat.... Perhaps with UnCat the connection becomes far more plausible.... but even so, Cat's out to avenge the Red Wedding but the wights behave more like crazed starved animals seeking meat... We've seen Dondarrion hold conversations, exercise free will, and otherwise perform advanced cognitive functions... aside from Coldhands, I don't think wights can even talk. If asked "who are you?", Dondarrion would answer "Lord Beric", If a wight was asked, it would try to rip out your intestines.

.I'm curious as to whether they would've ripped apart Gilly's babe or taken it somewhere. I think it wouldve been ripped apart, but I may be wrong. I haven't read or listened to that chapter in a long while, but it's rapidly approaching in my audiobook

There is no doubt that the whitewalkers want/need male infants... they were willing to keep Craster alive, so long as he gave 'em all the boys.... I wonder what they could possibly do with them.

The awkward bit about Thistle is that she has no eyes on account of them being ripped out in the fight with Varamyr, and then when it comes to "seeing" him afterwards, she's never seen his wolf before since she knows him just as Haggon. This suggests she's detecting his life force just as all the Wights seem to be able to do and recognising it not because she's encountered his wolf before but because he's been inside her

As to Small Paul, its reasonable to suppose that he's been sent to collect, not to butcher Craster's son. If it was just a matter of some killing instinct all the other Wights would have come in too, rather than patiently waiting outside while he did the deed.

I still get the impression that someone - and not necessarily a White Walker - raised up a load of dead people (and bears) with an mission to go take the Fist. Having done that, instead of being re-programmed to do something else, probably because like Beric and Cat they can't be, they're just cast adrift. As to their cognitive abilities, as I said with reference to Beric and Cat, it probably depends an awful lot on how fresh they are. Thistle was raised up while her body was still warm which is why she still retains self awareness, and the same may have been true of Small Paul since he was never particularly bright before he was killed. On the other hand an awful lot of the Wights appear to have been worse rotted than Cat when they were raised up.

Perhaps Coldhands too was raised while his body was still warm

[jon rr stark]

There is a difference in the way things are reanimated. Beric was brought back as in his spirit was brought back to his body but each successive reincarnation a little bit of the spirit is gone. here it is the spirit which inhabits or guides the body. In Uncat the spirit had been gone a long tome so only a little of could be brought back, to guide the animating life force. In the wrights the life force is there but no spirit. Even the hand Jon cut off was still animated and seemingly driven to kill mormont. So whatever re-lifed it gave it its simply instruction. The wrights around the childrens cave have no spirit. The spirit here is like the consciousness of the person. These wrights are buired in the snow waiting, not the sort of thing you could do if you still had any self awareness. So I see it as two things. Somekind of like force which can animate objects/former living things by some form of magic and a consciousness or the spirit of the person which can be pulled back from the afterlife such as the red lot (and perhaps other religions) can do.

On whitetree isnt the buring of the bodies to stop them being reanimated and maybe the putting the remains in the weirwood a method of also protecting the spirit.

Which leads me to the WW are they more a spirit/consciousness so therefore fully self aware. Maybe the ice appearance is the raw life force, or the magic stuff that gives life. When it comes into contact with dragonglass which is fire magic its like magic knife in magic flesh. as to whoses consciouness they are, could be the great other, some chrildren, ?

Now we also have rumours of ghosts in winterfell, what is a ghost only a consciouness without a body, so if they are ghosts in winterfell they are just waiting for someone to link them with the life force and you get a thousand or so stark statues wandering about. Well something is going to come out of those crypts.

[Drunkenspeton]

One thing I was thinking of regarding wights. Some people believe it is essentially the same process as what Thoros did with Beric and Beric to Cat. We just haven't witnessed the process the Others use to raise the Wights. I hope they don't kiss them.

If there is such a thing as a 'soul' in asoiaf perhaps the difference is as simple as the process Beric underwent allowed him to retain his soul. Thoros gave him a 'gift'. The Others retain the souls of those they raise, they 'take'.

Some speculate the Others are warging into the wights and controlling them.

What I wondered was in the caseof the Others/Wights there maybe something else in place. That its not just the Others raising and controlling the Wights. There is some form of transference involved.

That is the Others gain the knowledge in some way of those they raise. Are the Others themselves independent creatures, we know know nothing of their society, culture etc or if they even have any.

Someone once posted maybe they are like a hive mind so going on from that I speculate perhaps the others can through their magic add the knowledge of the Wights former selves to their sorcerous hivemind but the extent depends perhaps on the 'freshness' like Beric and Cats levels of retention of their humanity.

[hotweaselsoup]

Perhaps Coldhands too was raised while his body was still warm

Dead long enough to have the blood pool in his extremities, so maybe not super-freshly departed?

Since we're on the subject of death and immortality (and freedom and enslavement), can we pop over to Valyria for a mo' and think about the slaves over there? We know that the life of a slave in the Valyrian mines was horrific - so much so that many of them would fervently pray for death. The Faceless Man cult arises when its progenitor gives the gift of death to one of these miserable slaves. But I wonder, if life was so horrible for these slaves, why could they not just kill themselves? Why did they need someone else to do it for them? So that question got me thinking that perhaps these Valyrian slaves were unable to kill themselves because they were somehow kept alive against their wills. Maybe through some "kiss of life" type sorcery, some fire magic which forced "death itself to bend the knee". A slave who cannot die, no matter how back-breaking or dangerous or hellish the working conditions, would be quite the valuable commodity to his overlord, no?

Coldhands and Beric Dondarrion and Stoneheart all strike me as being cursed with "life", in much the same ways.

We are so fearful of death that immortality seems like it would be a wonderful blessing; but I think perhaps GRRM is showing us that immortality might be a type of enslavement, and maybe of the worst sort. And the overlong seasons parallel these overlong lives, especially when we think of the world itself as a living thing. (Harkening back to the idea that Westeros is a "body", with a High Heart, and a Neck, etc.)

[Elaena Targaryen]

Whitetree and the sacrifice issue; I believe some wildings do perform rituals and sacrifices, maybe not all because their are small variations of traditions from tribe to clan with exceptions of things like not offending the gods. Like guest right and kinslaying and they almost all seem to 'steal' women because they need to go outside of the clan as not to have insest issues which offends the gods.

So I believe it's very possible the slaves from the Wolf"s Den that hung entrails from the branches of the heart tree may have been wildings. North of the Wall would have been the best place to get slaves to ship off across the sea, and surely it would have been to bold to take people from the south of the Wall. It has been brought up how much wildings despise slavers so it must have been a problem at some time and they might see it as an offense against their gods so a sacrifical offering was made. They may have particular reasons when and why they would do a sacrifice.

On the wights ands Un's; maybe the differences with them are related to how personal or unpersonal the resurrection was. With Beric and Cat it was a one on one personal experience. With the wights it can be a mass resurection from a white mist with no personal contact. Maybe, maybe not.

[Jojen]

The North remembers. The trees remember. When a warg dies in an animal's body, part of them remains behind in the animal, so their memory is retained, for a little while at least. Beric remembered until his memories started fading too. Catelyn remembers enough for her own narrow purposes (vengeance and blood), a slave to her bloody cause. What we've seen so far is that when a thing dies, the memory usually lives on.

Do wights remember? Jon thought so. Do White Walkers remember who/what they once were? I think so. That could be what sets them apart from the wights, a continued sense of duty or responsibility, a mission that's isn't over, a watch that has not yet ended. Perhaps, as suggested above, the WW received the "cold kiss" while dying, while the wights received it after they've died. But who's doing the kissing? Are there White Priests somewhere?

[Black Crow]

Do wights remember? Jon thought so. Do White Walkers remember who/what they once were? I think so. That could be what sets them apart from the wights, a continued sense of duty or responsibility, a mission that's isn't over, a watch that has not yet ended. Perhaps, as suggested above, the WW received the "cold kiss" while dying, while the wights received it after they've died. But who's doing the kissing? Are there White Priests somewhere?

As to the Wights, essentially that's the impression I had, which is why I think that they're very much akin to Beric and Cat, only raised by Ice magic rather than Fire Magic and sustained by cold and heat respectively.

As to the White Walkers on the other hand they are clearly much more alive and on a level with Mel and Moqorro rather than Cat and Beric. We've certainly not seen any white priests as such - or at least not so far as we know - but I very strongly suspect and have argued before that it could well be connected with Warging. At a very basic level perhaps ordinary mortals can be raised up as Wights while Wargs can become White Walkers

[Drunkenspeton]

The Wargs become Others is an interesting idea. Perhaps there is a hierarchy to the others for instance if a Warg becomes an Other what would happen to a Greenseer?

We know the Wights are pretty flammable. Beric fought Sandor with a flaming sword so that seems to not be the case for the fire magic wights which makes sense.

So in reverse I wonder if those who are raised using fire are as equally vulnerable to ice/cold as the Wights are to fire.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

The Wargs become Others is an interesting idea. Perhaps there is a hierarchy to the others for instance if a Warg becomes an Other what would happen to a Greenseer?

We know the Wights are pretty flammable. Beric fought Sandor with a flaming sword so that seems to not be the case for the fire magic wights which makes sense.

So in reverse I wonder if those who are raised using fire are as equally vulnerable to ice/cold as the Wights are to fire.

So the Freys just need to throw a bucket of liquid nitrogen on unCat and they're good to go.n

[lokisnow]

Has anyone really tried to talk to a wight who had a reason to talk back? Nope. We're just assuming zombies and lack of will, lack of identity. We haven't really been presented with situations analogous to Beric and Cat where the wights could have a conversation.

Unless of course Coldhands is a wight, which makes him a pretty clear analogue to Beric/Cat

White Walkers are the priests beyond the wall the Melisandre and Moquarro are the priests of the red god?

I LOVE the idea that the many faced god gave death to the undead slaves of the Valyrians.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

By the by, did everyone check out the Victarion WoW chapter?