Heresy 76

[Black Crow]

If it is a stairwell, is that connected to the Stark exercise of defending a stairway? IIRC Theon mentions this somewhere.

And mayhaps it doesn't lead to the northern entrance, but the crypts of Winterfell?

Some "deep" magic would have to be involved there, but of course that does raise that old point again about the cold. Its understandable that the Black Gate should be cold as its underneath a dirty great pile of ice, but a little odder that it should be colder still on the other side. It may not be important of course, but that stairwell in the Winterfell crypts is cold too. Ordinarily the deeper you go underground the warmer it tends to be and especially in Winterfell which is shot through with hot springs. Yet that stair is cold.

[addicted to snow]

And now for something slightly different, or back to the Wall...

As I pointed out before the wall as originally built had no defensive features - or to be more precise was not designed to be defended by men, until about 4,000 years ago, after the coming of the Andals, the casles were built. Even then there are none of the other features commonly associated with defensive works. There are no forts or ditches beyond the Wall as was the case with Hadrian's one.

• How do you know that the wall had no defensive features? We don't know what the top looked like back when it was 100 or 200 feet tall, do we?

The sudden need for castles likely stem from an increased number of successful wilding raids while the Northerners were occupied in the South by the invading Andals. There is really nothing unusual going on here.

Now that the wall is 700 feet tall, no one expects to see battlements atop the structure, it so tall that battlements are not necessary (though I believe it does have battlements in the HBO version - so it is clear that HBO thinks the wall is in fact a defensive structure)...

Hadrian's wall has a ditch because that dirt was used to construct the wall. Once in place though, the ditch does serve a defensive purpose, so why not leave it? In ASOIAF, the wall is made from Ice, not stone, sod, and nearby dirt - therefore there is no ditch. Gravel is another minor material that went into the wall, but we do not know where their gravel quarry was located.

Once the wall reached across the entire landmass, the builders probably speculated that if someone was going over this huge structure, then a ditch will not hinder them enough to matter.

Forts along the wall would have been 100% necessary in order to provide shelter for the numerous workers who were building the wall. It is quite an assumption to assume that there were no forts. associated with the wall in its early days. How else would the workers have survived the winters? Which were the only time that ice was available & the only season that the Nights Watch was able to work on the wall.

When you reassert your position that the wall was not built as a defensive structure, are you dismissing the magic that was weaved into it's making? The magic that prevents wights from crossing? this seems pretty defensive to me, as does the clearing back of trees from the wall.

Another thought just crossed my mind: why build battlements when your intended foes, Wights, are not vulnerable to arrows?

[addicted to snow]

I am not a writer (clearly), but it seems to me that the two stairs spiraling further down into darkness is the writer's way of letting the reader know that they are connected...

[addicted to snow]

From the HBO version:

Maester Lewin suggested that Prince Theon take the Black so that he might live... Theon pondered the thought & then said that he was not like to get very far up the King's Road considering what he had done... Maester Lewin said something like: "there are secret passages that the Old Kings of Winter had in place should they find themselves besieged" or something like that...

So Maester Lewin suggest taking the Black & he seems to know of an ideal escape route to smuggle Theon to the wall... Interesting...

--

Clearly Maester Lewin hid a few kilos as well as all his bitches & hoes down there in this escape tunnel / cave network, otherwise he would have sent Bran through the tunnel straight to the Black Gate... haha

--

So what the fuck are the Starks doing sneeking off North of the wall???

--

Bael the Bard & the knocked-up Stark Chick were not hanging out in the crypts for 9 months after all, it would seem...

--

So, all this time that Mance Rayder was out 'ranging' he was really fucking Lyanna???

[The Dragon has three heads]

Its an interesting question fraught with ambiguity.

In the first place all we actually have apart from the slightly differing versions of the Azor Ahai story is that as you correctly recall, Mel says the prophecy was written in Asshai 5,000 years ago.

There is no reference to Azor Ahai being around earlier. Sam of course finds a legend of the Last Hero having wielded a sword of dragonsteel and there is often hopeful a tendency by readers to link Azor Ahai with the Last Hero. Whether this will turn out to be so I have no idea, but so far there is no evidence at all and indeed it might be the other way around in that what Sam found was a feat by Azor Ahai wrongly attached to the Last Hero. After all, as Sam complained, one of the problems is that all of the stories were written down thousands of years after the supposed events.

In looking over the timelines during the last couple of days I was also struck by how in both versions of the history of Westeros, the period before the Pact was known as the Dawn Age or the Dawn of Days. Is there a connection there to the Battle for the Dawn?

If the records are wrong, it could be, but the party line is as you know, dawn age-fm invasion-pact-age of heroes-long night-andal invasion.

Are some of these out of order? I wouldn't be surprised. At all.

Re the last hero/aa I think one must be the other, but perhaps each religion had their own version of their messiah. Like how Muslims think Jesus was a profit not to be worshipped as an idol like Christians do.

Eg he could have been a first man, who after the war one of his...disciples...went off to essos and wrote down the story where it was eventually turned into or picked up by the red lot and the FM on westeros were talking about the same thing, but slightly different because of their dogma.

As an aside, illyrio seems to praise The Lord of light in an early Danny chApter...missed that the first 3 times...

[Black Crow]

If the records are wrong, it could be, but the party line is as you know, dawn age-fm invasion-pact-age of heroes-long night-andal invasion.

Are some of these out of order? I wouldn't be surprised. At all.

Re the last hero/aa I think one must be the other, but perhaps each religion had their own version of their messiah. Like how Muslims think Jesus was a profit not to be worshipped as an idol like Christians do.

Eg he could have been a first man, who after the war one of his...disciples...went off to essos and wrote down the story where it was eventually turned into or picked up by the red lot and the FM on westeros were talking about the same thing, but slightly different because of their dogma.

As an aside, illyrio seems to praise The Lord of light in an early Danny chApter...missed that the first 3 times...

Unlike Mel we are of course groping in the dark here...

What I find a little troubling (just a little, I don't lose sleep over it) about the traditional timeline is that the Long Night appears to be a random event out of nowhere. Why does it suddenly happen?

Presumably we'll find out, but at this stage I think it would make a lot of sense for it to be the culminating episode in the battle for the Dawn Age, and the event which forced the First Men to negotiate the Pact. So far as I can recall all we've actually got is Maester Luwin's history to place the Long Night after the Pact and even then its a very casual reference.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

"The Long Night has come before. Oh, eight thousand years is a good while, to be sure ... yet if the Night's Watch does not remember, who will?"

(Jeor Mormont wants the Long Night on your timeline at 8k yrs before present.)

[Black Crow]

The "dating" of the Long Night isn't really an issue in itself. The question is whether the Long Night came out of the blue after the Pact, or whether the Long Night brought about the Pact. Maester Luwin's remark suggests it came between the Pact and the arrival of the Andals, but that's the only reference and is contradicted by his assertion that the Pact began 4,000 years of friendship until the Andals tooled up; hence the alternate timeline that sees the war for the Dawn being fought until the Long Night, the Pact ending it and the 4,000 years of friendship known as the Age of Heroes running from the Pact (and the Wall) until the Andals arrived 4,000 years ago - and it doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to note that 4,000 years of Heroes plus 4,000 years of Andals gives us the reputed 8,000 years of Wall.

[LynnS]

Some "deep" magic would have to be involved there, but of course that does raise that old point again about the cold. Its understandable that the Black Gate should be cold as its underneath a dirty great pile of ice, but a little odder that it should be colder still on the other side. It may not be important of course, but that stairwell in the Winterfell crypts is cold too. Ordinarily the deeper you go underground the warmer it tends to be and especially in Winterfell which is shot through with hot springs. Yet that stair is cold.

I think the entry to the crypts abuts the godswood making the temperature difference that much more unnatural.

In reading Bran's chapter at the Nightfort in A Storm of Swords ; they go exploring and Bran finds a dark and dim-lit dungeon with cells enough to hold 500 captives. The rusted bars broke off in his hand.

Why did the Nightfort need these prison cells or holding cells for so many people? Was the Nightfort an actual prison?

[JonNonRegis]

Maester Luwin's remark suggests it came between the Pact and the arrival of the Andals, but that's the only reference and is contradicted by his assertion that the Pact began 4,000 years of friendship until the Andals tooled up

Can you be more specific about this contradiction?

The traditional timeline is:

10K years back: Moat Cailin is raised. Hammer of the Water fails. Pact is agreed to on Isle of Faces

8K years back: Long Night. Wall is built by Men and CotF. Watch is founded. Winterfell is built.

6K years back: Andals invade Vale of Arryn and go on to conquer all of southron Westeros

10-6=4 thousand years of peace between men and CotF. Maester Luwin doesn't seem so inaccurate to me.

Nowhere in the books is it said that the Andals first invaded 4K years back. That is, as far as I can tell, a manufactured concept of Heresy... designed to connect to the castles on the Wall that apparently sprang up 4K years back.

(And it doesn't seem to work very well, because the Andals never conquered the North, and don't appear to have been a threat to, or even particularly relevant to, the Wall.)

[Frey family reunion]

As an aside, illyrio seems to praise The Lord of light in an early Danny chApter...missed that the first 3 times...

Also don't forget the presence of a red priest at Dany's "wedding shower"

[Urrax]

... the alternate timeline that sees the war for the Dawn being fought until the Long Night,..

It seem improbable that a war fought before the Long Night would be called "the war for the Dawn." Surely the very name implies that it was a war to end the darkness of the Long Night.

[JonNonRegis]

Now we know that Runes/ runic alphabets are written languages, so isn't it possible that the rune stones they found are such? Wouldn't that mean that there is written history about Westeros, before the Andals came to it? Couldn't these things tell us/them a lot of things?

Sure. This has always seemed quite plausible to me.

Real runestones as used by characters like the Vikings were generally de facto tombstones: "This stone was made to honor Steve, son of Rick, who was killed by Bruce for his treacherous support of the Alabama Crimson Tide."

But it's easy to imagine something more like this: "Here were defeated the Popsicles, slain by Jake Stark with [fire symbol] [sword symbol] in the war for the dawn."

[King of Winters]

The "dating" of the Long Night isn't really an issue in itself. The question is whether the Long Night came out of the blue after the Pact, or whether the Long Night brought about the Pact. Maester Luwin's remark suggests it came between the Pact and the arrival of the Andals, but that's the only reference and is contradicted by his assertion that the Pact began 4,000 years of friendship until the Andals tooled up; hence the alternate timeline that sees the war for the Dawn being fought until the Long Night, the Pact ending it and the 4,000 years of friendship known as the Age of Heroes running from the Pact (and the Wall) until the Andals arrived 4,000 years ago - and it doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to note that 4,000 years of Heroes plus 4,000 years of Andals gives us the reputed 8,000 years of Wall.

So do you think the Wall caused the Long Night or not?

[Black Crow]

Can you be more specific about this contradiction?

The traditional timeline is:

10K years back: Moat Cailin is raised. Hammer of the Water fails. Pact is agreed to on Isle of Faces

8K years back: Long Night. Wall is built by Men and CotF. Watch is founded. Winterfell is built.

6K years back: Andals invade Vale of Arryn and go on to conquer all of southron Westeros

10-6=4 thousand years of peace between men and CotF. Maester Luwin doesn't seem so inaccurate to me.

Nowhere in the books is it said that the Andals first invaded 4K years back. That is, as far as I can tell, a manufactured concept of Heresy... designed to connect to the castles on the Wall that apparently sprang up 4K years back.

(And it doesn't seem to work very well, because the Andals never conquered the North, and don't appear to have been a threat to, or even particularly relevant to, the Wall.)

I can certainly be more specific:

The business of the Andals turning up 4,000 years ago is assuredly not a "manufactured concept of heresy" and does in fact come from the books: Here's Hoster Blackwood again in ADwD:

Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some masters claim that it was only two. Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.

Rodrik the Reader says pretty much the same thing, but its important to distinguish between timelines and dates here. In the beginning we were told that men first came to Westeros 12,000 years ago, that the Wall and the Watch date from 8,000 years ago and that the Andals turned up in the Vale 6,000 years ago. Part of the confusion over the Andals appears to arise from some of them landing in the Vale 6,000 years ago, with the main migration occurring later.

As to the Pact on the other hand, there is nothing in the text to support the suggestion it was made 10,000 years ago and although referenced in the Wiki no sources are cited. Reading the various articles cross referenced, I get the impression its one of those things where someone has made a suggestion, perhaps based on the Andal arrival in the Vale, and its been accepted without question. All that we do know is that the wars lasted a long time and that 4,000 years of peace followed the Pact.

As we're not actually given a date for the Pact I'm reluctant to take the alleged arrival in the Vale as a reliable indicator, given that its uncertain and that even is the Arryns were playing one-upmanship, a toe-hold in the Vale isn't going to have much effect on the relationship between men and children in the rest of Westeros

[Black Crow]

It seem improbable that a war fought before the Long Night would be called "the war for the Dawn." Surely the very name implies that it was a war to end the darkness of the Long Night.

Its not exactly a perfect theory, but I am struck by the fact that the period is referred to (depending on which history is consulted) as the Dawn Age or the Dawn of Days and that we have a Battle for the Dawn

[alienarea]

I still prefer the long night to be caused by natural caused. The whole description reminds me a lot of either an asteroid hitting Westeros or a supervolcano going off.

[Black Crow]

So do you think the Wall caused the Long Night or not?

I still like the idea. The Wall dominates the story and as we learn more of the magic going into it I don't think we can afford the regard it merely as a bit of heroic architecture.

[JonNonRegis]

Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some masters claim that it was only two. Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.

OK, I'll give you that there exists a source (the True History, which may or may not be true or a history).

However, in GoT, we are told Alyssa Arryn (clearly an Andal) died in Westeros six thousand years ago.

The main point, though, is that Luwin is not necessarily contradicting anything unless the initial arrival of the Andals is certain. And that, as the boldfaced text above demonstrates, doesn't seem to be the case.

Part of the confusion over the Andals appears to arise from some of them landing in the Vale 6,000 years ago, with the main migration occurring later.

Could be. If so, the initial invasion is the first point when CotF would have been killed by men since the Pact, thus ending the four thousand years of peace.

[alienarea]

OK, I'll give you that there exists a source (the True History, which may or may not be true or a history).

However, in GoT, we are told Alyssa Arryn (clearly an Andal) died in Westeros six thousand years ago.

The main point, though, is that Luwin is not necessarily contradicting anything unless the initial arrival of the Andals is certain. And that, as the boldfaced text above demonstrates, doesn't seem to be the case.

Could be. If so, the initial invasion is the first point when CotF would have been killed by men since the Pact, thus ending the four thousand years of peace.

But it doesn't make a lot of sense that the First Men start breaking the pact and killing CotF if only a few Andals landed in Westeros?

They had a pact with the CotF, why didn't they combine their efforts to kick out the Andals?

This implies to me that the pact wasn't really a pact but a defeat of the First Men which has been relabeled later. That would fit with the First Men converting to the gods of the CotF.