Heresy 8

[Black Crow]

Just to expand a little on an earlier suggestion that Wights are raised from the ordinary dead while White Walkers were once Wargs.

As discussed above the end of the ADwD prologue and some other hints as well suggest that Wights, or at least some of them depending on how long they’ve been dead, may retain a degree of awareness and a memory of who they once were.

Varamyr’s detailed description of warging would therefore appear to rule out Wargs becoming Wights since on dying, messily or otherwise, their consciousness would flee to the primary host. Once there the Warg is stuck because he/she can’t directly transfer from one host to another. Thus Varamyr anticipated that once he’d warged into Thistle’s body to escape his own dying one, he’d spend the rest of his life as a Spearwife. In the end she fought him off and he had to go to his wolf instead, knowing that his consciousness would eventually fade as the wolf re-asserted itself, since he couldn’t then warg from the wolf into another host.

“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him… “When a man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

That’s straightforward enough. Thistle meanwhile, having clawed out her eyes and bitten off her tongue rises up as a Wight, but not Varamyr, presumably because his spirit is no longer in his body but in the wolf.

Now this has obvious implications for Jon’s escape. If the zombies whether Beric, Cat or Thistle and whether raised by Ice or Fire are spirits within bodies whose decay has been magically halted, then Jon, if dead can’t be raised by Mel or anybody else because his spirit will have gone into Ghost and is trapped there because his own body is dead.

Bit of a Catch 22 situation. If he wasn’t a warg his spirit would still be attached to his body and it could be raised up again by Ice or Fire. But because his spirit has transferred from his dead body to Ghost, the knicker elastic has broken and he can’t return to his body which consequently can’t be brought back to something resembling life.

So how does he get out of that? How does he avoid what Varamyr’s assumes will be his fate, becoming “a little less warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

This is where I have the dark suspicion that being an extremely powerful warg, and having the three-eyed crow to guide him he will in fact be able to escape from Ghost to manifest himself as a White Walker.

And one final thought on that one; making allowance for their being milky or I suppose icy white, those White Walkers in the prologue to AGoT sound a lot as though they have the look of Starks…

[Drunkenspeton]

Ah but the others also warg/raise beasts.

What if they can Whitify warg beasts?

There is a sense of finality in that.

[Humphrey Plantagenet]

In particular, a close look at wildling villages seems to indicate that every one of them, except Whitetree, has a longhall (a wooden construction, with thick walls made of logs, without windows) in addition to stone huts, which seem to be the places of habitation. Craster's keep is a longhall. The longhall (with the stone huts) is found also in the village where Stannis is stuck with his army, and also at the seats of the Glovers and Mormont. Any idea of the function of the longhall? Is it a sort of a church? Is it a place designed for hibernation? I must say I don't have any idea of how wildlings could survive Winter.

“long halls” were some of the earliest buildings in pretty much every part of the world. I don’t know much about the rest of the world but in Europe they developed in to “mead halls” or “feasting halls”. Pretty much just a large building with a single room which formed the heart of the village/settlement. From the fifth century to early medieval times they were the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king. As such it was likely to be the safest place in the kingdom and also the venue for most of the singing, drinking and general socializing. The most vivid example I can think of, and what springs to my mind when I picture them, is Heorot…the great hall built by King Hroðgar seen in Beowulf. The culture of the wildings reminds me a lot of the Geats, Danes etc. in Beowulf. The long halls would definitely be the place for the wildings to huddle together, keep warm, eat, drink and generally ride out the winter.

[Baitac]

Hello there! I was reading your posts regarding time, as in what is a year or a month, then and now. I am wondering, have you discussed Saints' Feast Days as a way to celebrate a person v. their birthdays? It's just that I don't want to bring it up if it has already been discussed vis a vis Name Days in ASOIF.

[Francis Buck]

Another quick little thing that caught my eye awhile ago and I forgot to bring it up. It's in a semi-early Jon chapter, the one where he notices all the faces carved into the trees on the south side of the wall. Jon assumes they're wildlings...but do we ever have any confirmation of this fact? There also happens to be a raven there, who calls out for corn. A hint of of Bloodraven spying around a bit? In addition, the faces have clearly been carved into trees at strategic locations; one facing the north and the Wall, one fixed on the Kingsroad, etc. Is it possible that Leaf, or some other Child of the Forest, is going around carving these things? If so, why? The only reasonable explanation to me is that they're gearing up for someone eventually marching towards the Wall. But what are the implications?

Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but I'm a little tipsy and wanted to to get it down before I forgot, and I do think it has relevance.

[lokisnow]

I am developping a taste for the anthropology of wildling culture. More information is welcome.

In particular, a close look at wildling villages seems to indicate that every one of them, except Whitetree, has a longhall (a wooden construction, with thick walls made of logs, without windows) in addition to stone huts, which seem to be the places of habitation. Craster's keep is a longhall. The longhall (with the stone huts) is found also in the village where Stannis is stuck with his army, and also at the seats of the Glovers and Mormont. Any idea of the function of the longhall? Is it a sort of a church? Is it a place designed for hibernation? I must say I don't have any idea of how wildlings could survive Winter.Boltons.

This is completely overdetermined. Based on what GRRM said in the recent TIFF interview I would say that when he was writing ASOS and ACOK details like having a longhall in every wildling village were ones that got away from him. As he said, now he can use search functions and Elio to nail down detail stuff quickly, but during the writing of the first three, he didn't really have those tools available to him. Particularly if the whitetree chapter was the first time he wrote a wildling village and he later added longhalls to their culture, but never went back to add them after.

Sometimes a tree is just a tree.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

Sometimes a tree is just a tree.

NEVER!!

No, I completely agree with you. Can;t pick the first 3 novels too clean when it comes to minor details, by GRRM's own admission.

I was thinking, for you Night's King fans out there in TV land, we might get some top notch back-story/discovery in TWoW if & when Stannis takes his seat at the Nightfort. Just as I bet there are answers in Winterfell's crypts, I bet there's some answers at the Nightfort. A hidden library, rookery, or other chamber, perhaps.

[Jojen]

I still hold to the very strong suspicion that the story of Bran Stark the Night's King is really the story of his betrayal by his brother and the breaking of the Pact.

Do you by chance foresee history possibly repeating itself? Could a Stark or Snow end up betraying his brother again?

“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him… “When a man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

That’s straightforward enough.

Straightforward, yes. But he prefaces it with "They say," not "It is known." He doesn't really know, so we have to take it with a pinch of salt.

[Black Crow]

Straightforward, yes. But he prefaces it with "They say," not "It is known." He doesn't really know, so we have to take it with a pinch of salt.

Ah, but that's Varamyr remembering what Haggon told him, and he then goes on to muse he knows its so because when he took over the eagle he found a fading bit of Orell inside it. Likewise later on when Bran is being taught to warg into crows the one he chooses has a fading memory of a Singer.

The whole point of the prologue is not to prepare us for Bran being taught by Bloodraven, because we've already seen him trying it on with Hodor before, but to prepare us for Jon warging into Ghost as the knives go in and alerting us to the fact that once he's in there he's stuck.

I don't want too tied up in the old arguments about whether, as is possible, he might survive his wounds or whether he's dead. I just see that there's two possible outcomes, one a little pedestrian and less than original, and a much more interesting outcome which I think has been hinted at and which we've been building up to for some time.

The first is that he's not dead but only badly hurt and destined to be laid up in bed for a long time having a three-eyed crow type course in developing his warging skills. Possible, but its been done already with Bran and outcomes aside I'd hope for something more original.

The favourite view that he'll only sit things out in Ghost until Mel kisses his body better isn't going to work precisely because his spirit has fled into Ghost and therefore his body can't be raised again because its just an empty shell.

Therefore the alternative option is not a Fire magic resurrection worked by Mel, but that he's temporarily at least stuck in Ghost, unable to warg out into his old body, or any other.

The question therefore is what happens next. Both his continuance in the story and Mel's vision of him going from man to wolf and back to man indicates that Varamyr is wrong and that it is possible to escape, but if its not a question of warging into a body, then we come back to the possibility of his being able to manifest himself as a White Walker, the Ice Dragon.

So much for Jon, what justifies this discussion here rather than on a Jon thread, is that it provides an explanation for the White Walkers. There are no numberless hordes of them, just a few because they are "dead" wargs, and not just any old wargs but dead Stark wargs.

[Nymeria Star-Eyes]

Do you by chance foresee history possibly repeating itself? Could a Stark or Snow end up betraying his brother again?

Perhaps it won't be Stark/Snow (because if R+L=J then he's a cousin instead of a brother) but the last two remaining Stark brothers fighting against each other: Bran and Rickon. I have this hyperbolized idea of Rickon returning to the narrative grown up, raised practically as a wilding by Osha, lord of the rumored "cannibals", and riding on a unicorn.

All wishful thinking aside, the story does seem to be leading Bran in a more sinister direction. If he does become some sort of Night's King reborn this is in control of CoTF, wights, WWs, or what have you, he would have to be put down by his younger brother to return the balance (sort of a repeat of the valonqar idea). That is, if we can believe that the Night's King was the bad guy, and not the Stark in Winterfell and Joramun.

And it would make more sense narratively to have Rickon do it than Jon. Especially if Jon returns as a WW--a theory I'm really inclined to believe.

So much for Jon, what justifies this discussion here rather than on a Jon thread, is that it provides an explanation for the White Walkers. There are no numberless hordes of them, just a few because they are "dead" wargs, and not just any old wargs but dead Stark wargs.

If the WW were only dead Stark wargs it makes sense to have the iron in the graves in Winterfell. They don't want WW rising below the wall. (Even if the wall's magic might prevent them from crossing. It's possible that the tradition dates back before the wall.)

What's strange though is that only the kings and lords in Winterfell's crypt have statues and swords. (Lyanna and Brandon only received statues because, as Bran says "My father loved them so much". Read: Part of Ned's promise to Lyanna was to hide something in her statue for Jon. Probably.) It's entirely possible that minor Starks have iron within their regular graves across their bones, but nothing has been mentioned to indicate that.

Is there any reason why only the spirits of Stark Kings would be feared? Perhaps it was only the kings that were the strongest wargs?

[Bran Vras]

This is completely overdetermined. Based on what GRRM said in the recent TIFF interview I would say that when he was writing ASOS and ACOK details like having a longhall in every wildling village were ones that got away from him. As he said, now he can use search functions and Elio to nail down detail stuff quickly, but during the writing of the first three, he didn't really have those tools available to him. Particularly if the whitetree chapter was the first time he wrote a wildling village and he later added longhalls to their culture, but never went back to add them after.

In fact the notion that every wildling village (say of the haunted forest, obviously other wildlings, like people of the Frozen Shore etc, have a different culture) has a longhall comes from ACoK and ASoS alone (compare the Whitetree chapter, Craster's chapter and the chapter where Sam escapes the wights). It's confirmed by the first Bran chapter in ADwD. It seems that the notion of longhall has been deliberately thought out by GRRM early on. In the Whitetree chapter, the rangers have a careful exploration of the empty village. Jon says specifically that Mormont sent two rangers in every house to be sure nothing is missed. (I took it as an invitation for the reader to be particularly attentive.)

Sometimes a tree is just a tree.

I wouldn't call Whitetree's weirwood "just a tree". It's the largest weirwood of the story, possibly the oldest, the only one with a hollow trunk, known even to wildlings living far away, one of the few landmarks beyond the Wall noted on the map and the human remains found in the tree haven't been explained yet.

[Uncat]

Just to expand a little on an earlier suggestion that Wights are raised from the ordinary dead while White Walkers were once Wargs.

As discussed above the end of the ADwD prologue and some other hints as well suggest that Wights, or at least some of them depending on how long they’ve been dead, may retain a degree of awareness and a memory of who they once were.

Varamyr’s detailed description of warging would therefore appear to rule out Wargs becoming Wights since on dying, messily or otherwise, their consciousness would flee to the primary host. Once there the Warg is stuck because he/she can’t directly transfer from one host to another. Thus Varamyr anticipated that once he’d warged into Thistle’s body to escape his own dying one, he’d spend the rest of his life as a Spearwife. In the end she fought him off and he had to go to his wolf instead, knowing that his consciousness would eventually fade as the wolf re-asserted itself, since he couldn’t then warg from the wolf into another host.

“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him… “When a man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

That’s straightforward enough. Thistle meanwhile, having clawed out her eyes and bitten off her tongue rises up as a Wight, but not Varamyr, presumably because his spirit is no longer in his body but in the wolf.

Now this has obvious implications for Jon’s escape. If the zombies whether Beric, Cat or Thistle and whether raised by Ice or Fire are spirits within bodies whose decay has been magically halted, then Jon, if dead can’t be raised by Mel or anybody else because his spirit will have gone into Ghost and is trapped there because his own body is dead.

Bit of a Catch 22 situation. If he wasn’t a warg his spirit would still be attached to his body and it could be raised up again by Ice or Fire. But because his spirit has transferred from his dead body to Ghost, the knicker elastic has broken and he can’t return to his body which consequently can’t be brought back to something resembling life.

So how does he get out of that? How does he avoid what Varamyr’s assumes will be his fate, becoming “a little less warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

This is where I have the dark suspicion that being an extremely powerful warg, and having the three-eyed crow to guide him he will in fact be able to escape from Ghost to manifest himself as a White Walker.

And one final thought on that one; making allowance for their being milky or I suppose icy white, those White Walkers in the prologue to AGoT sound a lot as though they have the look of Starks…

THIS is one of the most sound explanations of what happens to Jon, that I ever read. It would also hook in quite nicly with his dream where he defends the wall to all sides. There he carries an armour of ice. If we go along with the WW being basicaly spirits in the form of mist frozen into an icy embodyment, this would fit quite nicely.

Just to be clear: I don't expect this very situation to arise. But I always thought the fact important, that his armour was made of ice.

[Uncat]

As for the numbers of WW, if what Prof Crow suggests is true. We know that one in a thousend is a warg and one in thousend wargs is a greenseher.

The seems like a lot. But in our modern world we got very use to counting populations by the tens or hundreds of millions. But Westeros is a medieval world. I guess that we are talking about half a million people or less in the north. This means some three to five hundred wargs per generation and a greenseher gets born only every other generation (or less).

For what Black Crow suggests you would need to be a exeptionaly powerful warg, close to greenseher potential. So maybe one out of a hundred wargs.

Now to a speculative calculation: assuming the renewed and much shorter timeline, we are talking about some 200 Generations. If there is an everage of four children, and considering only the line of the Starks in Winterfell, we end up with 800 people. If we apply the statistical odds, that would make for not even one sure warg.

So lets a sume a strong warging gene, which raises the odds for Starks to be Wargs by factor 100. This means one Warg for every ten children. This gives us some eighty Stark wargs. Aplying factor ten for strong wargs, we get some eight potential WW.

Not much of an army. Even if you decided to incorporate every junior branch of the Family you will still have trouble to get more then say five hundred.

Prof. Crow, i like, where this is going.

[Lummel]

...in a semi-early Jon chapter, the one where he notices all the faces carved into the trees on the south side of the wall. Jon assumes they're wildlings...but do we ever have any confirmation of this fact? There also happens to be a raven there, who calls out for corn. A hint of of Bloodraven spying around a bit? In addition, the faces have clearly been carved into trees at strategic locations; one facing the north and the Wall, one fixed on the Kingsroad, etc. Is it possible that Leaf, or some other Child of the Forest, is going around carving these things? If so, why? The only reasonable explanation to me is that they're gearing up for someone eventually marching towards the Wall. But what are the implications?

The question, to my mind, is do the Wildings know, as Maester Luwin tells Bran, that the greenseers of the Children used the faces to spy on the first men - in which case they are acting to provide the Children with intelligence/information about what is happening south of the Wall or are the faces just totemic for the Wildlings and disconnected from their actual use by the Children - in which case they are carving faces out of habit or because they think it a proper way of honouring the gods with out knowing what the implications are?

Gilly tells Sam they can have sex at sea because the trees aren't watching (or can't see them) which suggests that the Wildings do have a sense that their gods are watching them and judging them through their faces (and not in a friendly or kindly way either) even if their gods might be disconnected from those who are actually watching them through those faces. It's very sinister when you let yourself think about it. Brgghh, nasty trees always watching us!

I wouldn't call Whitetree's weirwood "just a tree". It's the largest weirwood of the story, possibly the oldest, the only one with a hollow trunk, known even to wildlings living far away, one of the few landmarks beyond the Wall noted on the map and the human remains found in the tree haven't been explained yet.

I thought that the human remains in the tree were one of the few things we could be sure about post ADWD - we have a pattern of human sacrifice in the worship of the old gods or in other words sacrificial offerings are part of the worship of the old gods. We have the tree on the island in an Asha chapter, Bran's vision, the Whiteharbour jailer's story about the recapture of Whitehaven from the Slavers and then

There is the ending of the Theon chapter in TWOW

the interesting debate to be had is if Craster's behaviour with his sons and his sheep fits into the same worship or is a variant of it. Because if these are both acts of worship to the same supernatural forces then this both makes the old gods seem more sinister and (although possibly only indirectly) links the children and the white walkers.

[Free Northman]

Regarding the timeline:

We have an unbroken record going back the full 8000 years, which can prove it pretty much beyond a doubt. Only, we haven't been shown the full line yet, although it is there waiting for us.

I'm talking about the Stark kings in the tombs below Winterfell.

Every king is represented by a statue, going back in an unbroken line. We have only been shown the top level, which goes back to more or less King Jon Stark who lived about 3000-4000 years ago, based on the cross referenced , Maester supported timeline provided in the Davos chapters in Dance.

But we KNOW there are a number of additional levels down below, where the older kings' statues are located.

By counting the number of kings that have ruled, we can pretty much prove that the line does indeed go back 8000 years. Which I'm convinced it does.

The massive period of time adds significantly to the grandeur and gravity of the story, and I will continue to oppose any attempts to condense it to 2000 or 3000 years instead of 8000. It is 8000. And maybe even 10 000, going back to the ruins at Moat Cailin.

In any case, the number of statues will put the speculation to rest.

[Lummel]

...

By counting the number of kings that have ruled, we can pretty much prove that the line does indeed go back 8000 years. Which I'm convinced it does.

...

In any case, the number of statues will put the speculation to rest.

That will only prove the longevity of the Stark line and the continuity of their burial customs (assuming that they weren't relocated there at the later date or that they didn't take over the mortuary of another family human or Other).

8000 years worth of Starks doesn't prove when the Wall was built or when the Mega Winter was or when the Andals came unless their is a helpful biolgraphy carved on the side of every tomb.

Given the frequency of use of small number of family names there are going to be umpteen Brandon and Jon Starks making any cross referencing to the legends uncertain and subjective.

[Free Northman]

That will only prove the longevity of the Stark line and the continuity of their burial customs (assuming that they weren't relocated there at the later date or that they didn't take over the mortuary of another family human or Other).

8000 years worth of Starks doesn't prove when the Wall was built or when the Mega Winter was or when the Andals came unless their is a helpful biolgraphy carved on the side of every tomb.

Given the frequency of use of small number of family names there are going to be umpteen Brandon and Jon Starks making any cross referencing to the legends uncertain and subjective.

The 8000 year timeline is the foundation of it all. I am very open to the Andals coming more recently, but the Long Night remains a First Man event, with no Andals around at the time, and the symbolism and reason for existence of the Stark line is intertwined so tightly to the building of the Wall and the Long Night that I am happy that one corresponds to the other.

If you can prove that the Starks are 8000 years old, it pretty much proves the age of the Wall, as the oldest Stark statue will be that of Brandon the Builder, whose existence coincides with the Long Night itself.

[Free Northman]

Another corroborating bit of evidence for the traditional timeline is that the prophecy of Azor Ahai's RETURN is at least 5000 years old, meaning that the original Azor Ahai had to have lived earlier than that point.

3000 years earlier fits perfectly with that picture.

Either way, a date of only 2000 or 3000 years ago for the Long Night doesn't fit at all.

[Free Northman]

My view is that the timeline goes as follows:

12000 years ago - The First Men migrate to Westeros through the Arm of Dorne

8000 years ago - Brandon the Builder and the Long Night

8000 years ago - The Empire of Old Ghis or whichever eastern civilization existed at the time, recorded some details of the Long Night and "Azor Ahai". These are passed on and eventually births the prophecy of Azor Ahai's return around 5000 years ago.

5000 years ago - the Rise of young Valyria

4000 years ago - Pressure from expanding Valyrian Empire in Essos pushes the Andals towards Westeros.

Thus Rodric the Readers comment that the Maesters state that the Andals came 4000 years ago, rather than 6000.

All this does is extend the time during which the First Men ruled alone in Westeros, prior to the arrival of the Andals. But it doesn't change the timing of the Long Night in any way.

[Lummel]

The 8000 year timeline is the foundation of it all. I am very open to the Andals coming more recently, but the Long Night remains a First Man event, with no Andals around at the time, and the symbolism and reason for existence of the Stark line is intertwined so tightly to the building of the Wall and the Long Night that I am happy that one corresponds to the other.

If you can prove that the Starks are 8000 years old, it pretty much proves the age of the Wall, as the oldest Stark statue will be that of Brandon the Builder, whose existence coincides with the Long Night itself.

Not really. We have a legend that Bran Stark founded the line of Starks, built the Wall, built Storm's End and established Winterfell. If we have 8000 years worth of Stark tombs and assume the first one is Bran Stark because of the legend we've only succeeded in constructing a circular argument. 8000 year's worth of Stark tombs is only one data point, you'd want something similarly certain to draw firm conclusions like ice core data from the middle of the Wall or more sensibly, given the Citadel's probable lack of expertise in that area, a reliable list of Lords Commander of the Wall.

In any case 8000 years is just a number. I don't think it is meant to mean much more than to tell us that we are talking about things that are very ancient or more importantly are believed to be very ancient.

The significance is not when the ancient events happened but what their relationship to each other is, or might be.

Another corroborating bit of evidence for the traditional timeline is that the prophecy of Azor Ahai's RETURN is at least 5000 years old, meaning that the original Azor Ahai had to have lived earlier than that point...

Where's that mention of the prophecy being 5000 years old in the books Free Northman? Don't recall who mentioned that.