Dreams, Stories, & Portents, lets take a look.......Vol 1

[The Bastard of Summer]

“Prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head."-Tyrion Lannister

Like the Tyrion quote above we all like to try and decipher the prophecies, dreams, and stories within the story,Throughout the story we come across several dream sequences and prophecies, and have our own ideas about them. Most of them can't be taken at face value and are not quite as literal as them seem. Some of this may help up puzzle out a few things that went on in the past even. So In this thread I would like for us all to focus on and discuss these dreams and prophecies so that we can get a better understanding of each character. The part they play and their situations and how they have or will effect the story to come.

What we will be looking at here is:

• How the writer uses prophecy in the story. Is it a story telling by literal exposition
  
• How are we the readers supposed to interpet these findings and apply them to better understand the text.
  
• Lets look at the people who are giving the prophecies where it applies. How are they received by the characters around them
  

.............(Thank you Dr. Pepper & UVA for helping give this thread a bit more substance)

I am aware that many of these things are yet to come, may never come, or have already happened, but I'm going to post it any way.

So where to start, I really didn't know how. So I'll go alpahbetically by characters with a POV. I will list them and then you all can have at it.

The list won't be 100% but, If I miss anything let me know (as I know you all won't fail to do) and I will add it in.

Dreams & Prophecies- First up Arya & Bran

Arya Stark

Overhearing the Ghost of High Heart......

1. "The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye."

2. "I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging

from his wings."

3. "I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke

from terror. All this I dreamt, and more."

4. "The king is dead, is that sour enough for you?" Arya's heart caught in her throat. "Which bloody king is dead, crone?" Lem demanded. "The wet one. The

kraken king, m'lords.I dreamt him dead and he died, and the iron squids now turn on one another. Oh, and Lord Hoster Tully's died too, but you know that, don't

you? In the hall of kings, the goat sits alone and fevered as the great dog descends on him."

5. "I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief," the dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast, with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. "I see you," she whispered. "I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death . . . " She began to sob, her little body shaking. "You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!"

6. ...she used to have bad dreams about getting lost in the castle. Father said the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had been immense, an endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change behind her. She would find herself wandering down gloomy halls past faded tapestries, descending endless circular stairs, darting through courtyards or over bridges, her shouts echoing unanswered. In some of the rooms the red stone walls would seem to drip blood, and nowhere could she find a window. Sometimes she would hear her father's voice, but always from a long way off, and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow fainter and fainter, until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark.

Bran Stark

When Bran first has his dream about the 3EC.......

1. He saw his mother sitting alone in a cabin, looking at a bloodstained knife on a table in front of her, as the rowers pulled at their oars and Ser Rodrik leaned across a rail, shaking and heaving. A storm was gathering ahead of them, a vast dark roaring lashed by lightning, but somehow they could not see it.

He saw his father pleading with the king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart. There were shadows all around them. One shadow was as dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood.

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him ... North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder, now you know why you must live.

"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

2. "I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad." "And why was that?" Luwin peered through his tube. "It was something to do about Jon, I think." The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams.

3. "They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."

4. The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snaked whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.

Bran seeing through the weirwood network

5....but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the gods-wood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard Stark seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head was bowed."...let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive..." "Father, it's me. It's Bran. Brandon." Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, disparing. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he cold do was watch and listen. I am the tree. I am inside the hear tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can't. Eddard Stark resumed his prayer. Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood's? If cry, will the tree begin to weep? The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a suddern clatter of wood on wood. Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun. Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beathing him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hardthat his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid." the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone. After that the glimpses came faster and faster, til Bran was feeling lost and dizzy, He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenger her. Then there camea brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shringing, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into sapplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them. Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. "No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centeries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth...but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

Cersei Lannister

Daenerys Targaryen

Davos Seaworth

Eddard "Ned" Stark

Jamie Lannister

Jon Snow

Melisandre of Asshai

Samwell Tarly

Sansa Stark

Theon Greyjoy

Tyrion Lannister

Stories

Meera Reed

Old Nan

Ygritte

Many of you have discussed this topic already, but there are many new people to the site who didn't get to have their say yet

or just plain old don't want to search for the topic, so please be patient with them and let the discussion begin.

[Dr. Pepper]

Summers Dragon, can you offer a little more guidance to get this conversation started? What sort of discussion are you hoping for? How does the Tyrion quote relate to your intentions for the thread? Etc.

[Queen Regent of Westeros]

Also, is there like, a meta forum or something for prophecies and visions and the like?

[The Bastard of Summer]

Summers Dragon, can you offer a little more guidance to get this conversation started? What sort of discussion are you hoping for? How does the Tyrion quote relate to your intentions for the thread? Etc.

Umm good question could you help me out here? it would be greatly appreciated. I was just trying to get the ball rolling. I'm not all that good with these things. And I got kinda lazy at the end :frown5:

[The Summer Islander]

I won't get terribly analytical like you asked but I will tell you what i think the dreams mean. A few think have already happened and been revealed so no need to explain those in great detail.

Dreams & Prophecies- First up Arya & Bran

Arya Stark

Overhearing the Ghost of High Heart......

1. "The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye."-We know this is Stannis' shadow baby killing poor Renly.

2. "I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging

from his wings."-It is widely believed that this is the faceless man that Euron hired to kill Balon Greyjoy....Euron is innocent I tell you he is no kinslayer!

3. "I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke

from terror. All this I dreamt, and more."-we know that this is Arya warged into Nymeria pulling Cats body from the river after the glorious RW then waking up as the horrible monster Lady Stoneheart

4. "The king is dead, is that sour enough for you?" Arya's heart caught in her throat. "Which bloody king is dead, crone?" Lem demanded. "The wet one. The

kraken king, m'lords.I dreamt him dead and he died, and the iron squids now turn on one another. Oh, and Lord Hoster Tully's died too, but you know that, don't

you? In the hall of kings, the goat sits alone and fevered as the great dog descends on him." -Ghost of HH coming back to say I told you so about Balon Greyjoy dying. Then telling them about the upcoming kings moot. Then Vargo sitting at HH as Gregor approaches.

5. "I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief," the dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast, with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. "I see you," she whispered. "I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death . . . " She began to sob, her little body shaking. "You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!" The howling wolf is Greywind sitting outside at the RW with one around who cares to hear his grief. The clangor is the hired assassins sitting in for the band. Then you have Sansa with the poison net on at Joffs wedding. Then Sansa again predicting that she will kill LF at the Eyrie while it is covered in snow. His fathers sigil is a titan of course making him a giant. The bit about Arya I don't know which way to go with it......

6. ...she used to have bad dreams about getting lost in the castle. Father said the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had been immense, an endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change behind her. She would find herself wandering down gloomy halls past faded tapestries, descending endless circular stairs, darting through courtyards or over bridges, her shouts echoing unanswered. In some of the rooms the red stone walls would seem to drip blood, and nowhere could she find a window. Sometimes she would hear her father's voice, but always from a long way off, and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow fainter and fainter, until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark. I think this was Arya having warg dreams as a cat, but she didn't realise it.

Bran Stark

When Bran first has his dream about the 3EC.......

1. He saw his mother sitting alone in a cabin, looking at a bloodstained knife on a table in front of her, as the rowers pulled at their oars and Ser Rodrik leaned across a rail, shaking and heaving. A storm was gathering ahead of them, a vast dark roaring lashed by lightning, but somehow they could not see it. This is Bran seeing things in the present. His mother and Ser Rodrik on the on their way to KL with Rodrick throwing up all the way there. Then it can either be the real storm that happen or speaking symbolically of the shit storm Cat was about to stir up.

He saw his father pleading with the king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart. There were shadows all around them. One shadow was as dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood. Also present time Ned pleading to Bobby B about Ayra and Joff's fight. Sansa crying because she lied and was responsible for her wolf inadvertently being killed. Arya holding all her hate in for Joff, the Queen, Bobby B, and a bit for Sansa's lying ass.

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. Might he be seeing Dany's dragons being born, or Dragons in Asshai that are the only ones that exisisted til Dany's hatched.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him ... North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned his cheeks. Here I don't think he is seeing Jon after his Ides of March incedent. I think he is also seeing Jon present day. Little by little day by day he is growning colder (the warmth fleeing), meaner, he is become a true King of Winter. Then when he looked in to the LoAW he was the gathering of the Others and wights, and all the many wighted animals that are coming to bring down the wall.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder, now you know why you must live.

"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid. Bran seeing many old dead greenseers who somehow couldn't manage their ability and fell victim to green dreams

2. "I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad." "And why was that?" Luwin peered through his tube. "It was something to do about Jon, I think." The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams.I think this is Ned trying to communicate with Bran to tell him that there is something that Jon will need or help Jon learn the truth of his parentage in Lyanna's crypt.

3. "They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."....Bran getting dream messages from the 3EC trying to get him to tap into his ability.

4. The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snaked whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.His vision was clouded I don't think he saw a dragon.....how exactly was a dragon living underneath WF? How did it survive? What did it eat? I don't think it was encased in stone....No. I don't think I buy that. But I can not explain what it was :dunno:

Bran seeing through the weirwood network

5....but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the gods-wood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard Stark seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head was bowed."...let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them," he prayed, "and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive..." "Father, it's me. It's Bran. Brandon." Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, disparing. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he cold do was watch and listen. I am the tree. I am inside the hear tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can't. Eddard Stark resumed his prayer. Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood's? If cry, will the tree begin to weep? The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a suddern clatter of wood on wood. Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun. Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beathing him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hardthat his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid." the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone. After that the glimpses came faster and faster, til Bran was feeling lost and dizzy, He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenger her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shringing, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into sapplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them. Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. "No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centeries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth...but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

1. Bran saw Ned through the WWNW praying that Jon and Robb grow up and love each others as brothers. He didn't want Jon to feel like a bastard or be treated like one by his true born children.....from this point on I think all the visions it's all telling a specific story and is connected some how
   
2. Bran spoke a quiet shout like he did to Jon. And like BR did to jon through Ghost to get Jon's attention. How else would a mute wolf make a vocal noise for Jon to hear. , Ned heard Brans quiet shout through time but wan't sure if he really hear what he heard. Thus Bran can communicte in the past and present unlike BR told him. He is obviously has the potential to be more powerful than BR.
   
3. Then Bran sees what he thought was him self and Arya playing at swords, but it turns out it's Lyanna handing Benjen his ass to him.
   
4. Then a pregnant woman getting out of the pool I think this is the Stark girl from the Bael the Bard tale. I don't think this tale happened as long ago as the wildlings think it did. He stole her from her father he was a wilding afterall. She didn't love him he raped her and got her pregnant. He hid them out in the crypts, but I believe she escaped somehow and had yet to give birth, unlike in the tale, And thus we see her praying for a son to avenge her.....
   
5. The Brown haired girl I believe is a Old Nan with hair! She is kissing Dunk the Tall when he visited Winterfell, thus Hodor is his great great grandson? That is why he is so tall. Nan's kids are just a few of his bastards......Brienne of Tarth being one more of his offspring
   
6. The dark eyed youth being Torrhen's brother who wanted to go to Aegon's camp all stealth like to kill Aegons and his sisters dragons with the Weirwood arrows, but the stupid KtK was like noooo lets just surrender........
   
7. Then Bran sees the old King of Winter from the crypts, making a blood sacrifice to the Old Gods maybe to keep the magic that guards working? Not sure why they are doing what they are doing...... :dunno:
   

[Hedgehog]

Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood.

That one's quite interesting, compared with the vision Dany has after losing her child...

"And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. 'The last dragon,' Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. 'The last, the last.' Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own."

I can't exactly recall when Bran has those dreams, was it ADWD or before?

There's a certain theme or motif weaving through both dreams, especially if that little voice in the back of your head whispers "waking dragons from stone"... that's something I like very much about ASOIAF, that feeling that there's a connection between all those dreams and visions, and if you'd only be able to stare at all the pieces hard enough and long enough, you could see the big picture clearly... but of course you can't. ;)