Arya's whereabouts and actions in the forthcoming novels

[Dolorous Ali]

I don't know why there are still people out there who think that GRRM promised his wife not to kill Arya. I would have loved it so much if this was true (if Arya dies then the series is nothing to me and I'll stop reading), but this statement is not true. Someone told GRRM that she can't kill Dany, and GRRM said that his wife told him not to kill Arya! What this means is that he will not spare the characters because we don't want them dead. He never promised his wife. I wish he did, so much.

Oh, and I do believe that warging into Nymeria will help Arya, either with her identity or with her powers to kill by reuniting with it. But if Nymeria is gonna help her with her identity, couldn't Arya get a totally new wolfish identity, like becoming nightwolf, if she completely loses her current identity? It's kinda crackpot, but I remember Jon or Bran saying that he is part of his direwolf, and his direwolf is part of him. So, if she loses her identity, and take an identity through Nymeria, it might be not the part of herself that she lost. She might get a more wolfish identity! Wouldn't that be awesome?!

[Roughspun]

She might get a more wolfish identity! Wouldn't that be awesome?!

Remember that Nymeria has made a habit of eating humans? She even wanted to take a chunk out of Arya’s dead mother.

So, yeah, would be super awesome.

[dablueman]

Did the tv show give a spoiler. Jaquen basically tells Arya that if she goes with himthat the faceless men would teach her how to take care of all the names on her list. I know the show deviates some but i also know thar grrm has a great deal of input.

[Khal Diablo]

I believe she will go back to Westeros and have to make some very cruical decisions as a facelss woman that will effect the outcome of the story. I expcet that she might end up having to kill someone she once regarded as a friend or even family. It will create a very moral dilema for her and should add a new wrinkle to her story.

GRRM won't make it easy and let her and have her kill "bad guys," she more than likley will have to end up killing someone that is prolly more well liked. That is my opinion it would be to easy to have her kill Cersei or Ramsy Bolton (never Snow).

[Dolorous Ali]

IIRC when Nymeria caught the scent of Catelyn, she stopped her pack from eating her! Is it my poor memory or you're wrong?

Anyway that would still be so gooood, cause I just love it when Arya kills someone!

[Roughspun]

IIRC when Nymeria caught the scent of Catelyn, she stopped her pack from eating her! Is it my poor memory or you're wrong?

She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us.

Reads like Nymeria actually is after the meat, while the last thought seems to be influenced by Arya’s consciousness.

[LordDolorousEdd]

I believe she will go back to Westeros and have to make some very cruical decisions as a facelss woman that will effect the outcome of the story. I expcet that she might end up having to kill someone she once regarded as a friend or even family. It will create a very moral dilema for her and should add a new wrinkle to her story.

GRRM won't make it easy and let her and have her kill "bad guys," she more than likley will have to end up killing someone that is prolly more well liked. That is my opinion it would be to easy to have her kill Cersei or Ramsy Bolton (never Snow).

It seems like this would be a natural cross roads but faceless men don't kill people they know so it may not be possible unless they only kill them as some sort of training......

[gogorath]

It seems like this would be a natural cross roads but faceless men don't kill people they know so it may not be possible unless they only kill them as some sort of training......

Why do people keep saying this as if it is immutable fact? As if a faceless man could not simply not speak up/lie when a name omens up?

Since much of Arya's training is centered around being able to lie effectively to even the kindly man, what makes anyone think that Arya would balk at hiding the fact that she knows someone?

[Roughspun]

Why do people keep saying this as if it is immutable fact?

This. For all we know, they might simply prefer not to assign assassinations to people who know their victims.

[iamthedave]

Why do people keep saying this as if it is immutable fact? As if a faceless man could not simply not speak up/lie when a name omens up?

Since much of Arya's training is centered around being able to lie effectively to even the kindly man, what makes anyone think that Arya would balk at hiding the fact that she knows someone?

The Faceless Men still read her like a book 9 times out of 10. Unless you think the Faceless Men are stupid incompetents, Arya is not going to get to run around flouting the faith their entire organization is built on by murdering the people she doesn't like. And if she does expect the final words ever written in an Arya chapter to be along the lines of 'valar morghulis' as a Faceless Man kills her. Realistically, in their history Arya can't be the first person to try and run off with their super-secret-special-awesome magic and training, and as much as people love to big her up, Arya Stark has never been the biggest dog around. She's always been a yappy dog surrounded by rottweilers, and has spent the entire series as a serial kidnap victim.

Plus, the last line in Dance is very ambiguous and may well suggest that they are starting to successfully indoctrinate her. She may well simply lose interest in the (paltry) list and become a Faceless Man in truth.

I think she's going to become an insider POV on the Faceless Men, since it's been hinting they're up to something, and she's the only one who could possibly give us an inside POV on it, given Martin resolutely refuses to use POVs from people in positions of knowledge, preferring observers. I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up in Oldtown with Sam, either, given we know the FM are doing something there, too.

I still have a nagging sensation that Arya will - somehow - end up killing Sansa indirectly, perhaps as a knock-on effect of killing someone else. I can't even say where it comes from, but I've felt it'll happen from the moment she became a FM.

[DirtyRobes]

She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat.

Rise,

she thought.

Rise and eat and run with us.

Thanks for the quote. I read it that it was Arya in control the whole time, she just didn't know what it was that was drawing her there, she acknowledges the sweet smells but is drawn more to the blood. I assumed she knew who she was pulling ashore as I see no reason Nymeria would not share some dead body with her pack. She didn't need to turn around or even to turn the body over to know who it was. I thought the final line was more an amalgam of Arya's lack of understanding, dream state(seeing her mother dead) and her yearning to rejoin her pack.

[Northern Pride]

Something's got to give here. We know Arya will receive top notch assassination training here soon and will be probably proficient at it like everything else she does. She will be given another target, if not two. There will be a moral dilemma and possibly a failed attempt due to a conscientious decision on Arya's part. However, if something like this does happen, we are talking about the faceless men here. To defy them is a certain death sentence. How would she possibly go on living in any scenario unless either the Faceless men were put to an abrupt end by a mass murder? Or she was somehow pardoned?

[Straniero]

Well...

Following characters have highest number of POVs [in random sequence]

Arya

Jon

Tyrion

Deanerys

What does it mean?

- Arya is definitely not side character, and her plot is VERY important.

- Only one of primary POVs Arya don't know by name is Daenerys

Conclusion? :)

The dragon has three heads, and one of them could very well be her? Of the four significant POV characters above, she is one of the three positioned on the same continent as the dragons at the end of ADWD (who knows who, where or what Izembaro turns out to be of course). It would be a great bit of foreshadowing if Arya's GoT adventure in the Red Keep's cellars (Yet the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim cavernous room that did not love her. Etc.) mirrors an encounter with Rhaegal holed up in his burned out pyramid. Or if the scene with the cat and the old man was really meant to show us she can connect with more than just her wolf. I am grasping at straws like everyone else with guesses, since Izembaro is going to end up being the clue to the direction she is headed (literally and figuratively) and it is a complete mystery right now. I like all of the other speculation as well, especially if and how she would get back into contact with family/former companions or actually leave the Faceless Men, but if we are taking a stab at something grandiose, this would fit the bill for me.

[FrozenFire3]

I think it would be really interesting if at some point she met Jaqen again...

[iamthedave]

Something's got to give here. We know Arya will receive top notch assassination training here soon and will be probably proficient at it like everything else she does. She will be given another target, if not two. There will be a moral dilemma and possibly a failed attempt due to a conscientious decision on Arya's part. However, if something like this does happen, we are talking about the faceless men here. To defy them is a certain death sentence. How would she possibly go on living in any scenario unless either the Faceless men were put to an abrupt end by a mass murder? Or she was somehow pardoned?

I really don't think Arya will survive the series. The constant comparisons to Lyanna Stark are not a good sign, given Lyanna's trope is 'live free, die young'.

[Dolorous Ali]

I really don't think Arya will survive the series. The constant comparisons to Lyanna Stark are not a good sign, given Lyanna's trope is 'live free, die young'.

Not exactly. She could live the life that Lyanna didn't, or the reference to Lyanna is just some kind of character description. What worries me about her, is that in Harrenhal she said to a Frey that I hope your princess dies. She was the princess herself. We see people from her list dying, and she wished herself dead. This might mean that she'll be killed, but it could mean another thing: Arya being dead, not the girl. I mean, in the temple of the many faced god she is trying to kill Arya. I hope it doesn't go more than this. And what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. I can handle a dead Arya, but not the girl being dead. Maybe Arya (not the girl) will be killed, or only seem to be killed but is either reborn or come out of hiding. Or maybe better, "Arya", that is to say Jeyne Poole, dies (though I hate her, it might be good to be put out of the misery; but she should reveal herself first to be able to destroy Ramsay's claim to Winterfell.)

[Dolorous Ali]

Sorry, double post

[saillias]

I think the FM will send Arya back to Westeros to kill Sansa.

Or they send her to kill "Arya" aka Jayne Poole.

Arya made a promise to not stab her sister? How specific and oddly convenient. LMAO

[Bastard of Four Oaks]

First of all, Arya will kill Cersei; That is the truth of it. Cersei defaulted on the Iron Bank. Period.

Second, Missandei probably IS a Faceless Man already. "This one" really?? Shes always in the mix everytime a crucial decision is made by anybody in that set. Just like the Dusky Woman on Victarions ship, who probably killed Balon and is going to at least make a move in Mereen; Dusky knows everything that Victarion is planning.

Third, nobody in Westeros would recognize Arya at all. Everybody from Winterfell is dead except whats left of her family and Gendry, and she was never at court long enough for Cersei or anyone else to pay any attention to her; not to mention she looks COMPLETELY different than she did in AGoT, with or without the shapeshifting crap.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Reading over this thread, I feel as if Arya getting sent to kill Daenerys, or infiltrate her organization, is the most likely possibility.

I don't think Arya's just going to up and leave (either with Justin Massey, or by herself) and go back to Westeros. She's had opportunities to leave and go see Jon or whomever else, and hasn't taken them because she doesn't fundamentally want to go. Beyond that, we've gotten enough hints about the FM having an agenda that it only makes sense that Arya's storyline is going to involve either fulfilling or undermining that agenda.

I also don't think that Arya's going to get the assignment to kill anybody on her list. The Kindly Old Man already knows about her list, because somebody overheard her list of names. So even if she had the ability to lie to him, which she doesn't, she wouldn't be able to lie about this. Also, Arya's storyline has involved her killing people with less justification and more premeditation; if her story culminates in a big crowd-pleasing moment of revenge, what's the point?

I like the idea of Arya being sent to kill Alayne Stone, not realizing that it's her sister. But that requires somebody to really want to murder Alayne Stone, and as things are right now, it's hard to imagine anybody really wanting to do that.

So that leaves us with Daenerys. First, there are a number of hints that the FM are anti-Valyrian, from their roots as a Valyrian slave cult to their (hinted) role in the Doom of Valyria to the Faceless Man seeking after The Death of Dragons in the Citadel archives. Even reasonable phlegmatic Braavosi are so prejudiced against Valyrians that the mere mention of a dragon upsets them, four hundred years after the Doom. How much more so the fanatical devotees of a Braavosi death god? So it makes sense that the FM have an agenda that involves the destruction of Daenerys and the death of her dragons.

But why would they give a mission to a very raw recruit like Arya? Well, because--assuming that her fling with Daario is over, which it seems to be--the only people who see Dany without being surrounded by guards are female. And we know that there are very few Faceless Women, but there is one, happily around the same age and build as a young servant who shares Dany's bed. So they could send somebody to kill and impersonate Ser Barristan, legendary warrior who is always vigilant and a legendary fighter--good luck--or they could send Arya.

(Would Arya do it? Of course. She killed the Braavosi merchant for no reason besides the fact that he had a price on his head. Why not Missandei? It's a logical next step down on her arc.)

It gives Arya a perfect stopping point for the end of TWOW: having murdered Missandei and taken her features, she takes her place at Dany's side, Dany being none the wiser, with it being an open question whether Arya will try to fulfill the FM's larger goals or ultimately oppose them.