1000 Worlds - In the House of the Worm

Yet another weirwood/cotf/First Men angle, Maester Sam :


ASOIAF:


In the House of the Worm:

Ok, did the reread! A few thoughts..



Sounds like the White Worm is another face of Him of Many Faces, doesn't it?



Here we have obsidian, again. But not only that, but FUSED obsidian. Very interesting... as it seems to suggest that the ancient Ecological Engineers knew the art of fusing stone.



This is just this planet's version of Ygritte's favorite phrase, isn't it?



This is almost certainly an elevator shaft, located next to the stairs with its own door. I can't help but wonder about those dark shafts the COTF warned Bran & Co about ... It's too bad the semester is about to start again; I would love to do an Ice&Fire reread specifically looking for signs of it being an interregnum world. Sigh. Perhaps in the summer...



Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of "rage, rage against the Dying of the Light."



Ah, here it is - the struggle for life that's missing from the rest of the yaga-la-hai.

Overall, I really liked this story, though I find it frustrating to try and figure out what actually happened "a million years ago". Were the grouns really first? Why would advanced humans have lost the war against them? This seems extremely unlikely, IMO. The lab Annelyn runs into has several normal grouns, and one with eyes, human-type clothing, an apparent weapon and night vision goggles. WTF? What is it? Why would they engineer such a being? Was it their attempt at creating the Third People? So many questions... But the Ice&Fire parallels are fun to see, as well as the contrast to Dying of the Light in terms of how people deal with life on a dying planet.

No need to apologize- you are generally much better at responding promptly than I am! And sadly, fairly soon, I'll be disappearing back into the real world...



Hmmm, good question. I was thinking the yaga-la-hai, b/c of how accepting they are of their own demise. And b/c they live in the upper tunnels, and don't venture too far down into the lowest levels. AND they worship the White Worm, while the COTF worship the white weirwood with its roots all around them.

In my mind, the grouns are the Others; vilified creatures of darkness that are clearly related to humans but also clearly inhuman. This, however, doesn't account for the worms.

If instead we said that the yaga-la-hai are men, and the grouns are COTF, then the White Worms could be White Walkers (WW in both cases- coincidence? Weirwood also fits). In this case, though, it was man who created the WW on purpose, to fight the grouns/COTF. An interesting proposition, for sure, and a preferred theory of mine until D&D told the exact opposite story and made me doubt it.




LOL! Yes, that fits better.



Sure, works for me! When it comes to GRRM's works, the darker and more negative a theory is, the more likely I am to believe it, lol.




Yeah, that's what I was thinking at first, due to the white roots resembling the white worms, and the earthen sides of the tunnels. In the story at hand, the man-made and groun-made tunnels are metal, and the wormholes have natural/earth sides.

That being said, since these are specifically fire wyrms, the fused stone tunnels (i.e. inside the base of the Hightower) would fit very nicely.

Realistically, though, I doubt we will ever learn where all those tunnels came from originally.



Hmmm. These things that burrow into the earth and live off death and decay? That could certainly fit as well.




BR is physically turning into one of the gods though, isn't he? There are roots growing through him, he can no longer move around, and he only has one eye. (If he loses the other one he becomes a groun, lol).




I hadn't thought about the glass candles, but Yes! Those seem likely leftovers of a more advanced civilization (and I don't mean the Valyrians).

I was thinking more of Dragonstone, Hightower, and any other fused stone structures we come across, i.e. the "Valyrian" roads. We hear that they used dragonflame to fuse the stone- but can you imagine trying to pave a road using dragons to melt your asphalt? Did they literally have designated construction dragons that did nothing but breathe fire on command all day long? And even if so, that still doesn't really explain how they formed the fancy dragon shapes on DS. Molten rock is not easily handled, let alone shaped into dragons on the side of a castle.

It would make a lot more sense if such structures were built using some other technology - a technology that apparently existed before the interregnum. Dragons are simply impractical, IMO.



Yaga-la-hai

Azor-a-hai ?

You know nothing, Azor...



That's the impression I had the first time I read it. On this reread though, a few key differences stand out.
Annelyn doesn't provide meat- not to men or to grouns. He promotes peace, and encourages men to lay with grouns, rather than hunting both and feeding them to each other. So that's a lot more positive, and promotes sustainability in the form of a new race.
Yes the Meatbringer also lay with both, but he didn't encourage others to do the same, didn't tell the yaga-la-hai that grouns are intelligent and know the forgotten histories. He recognized the problem, but rather than help out both sides, he wanted to create a separate Third People who would be superior to both (and who apparently would eat both, as he did). He also never warned the yaga-la-hai about the worms multiplying beneath the House- an important fact if humanity is to survive in the long term.

Annelyn throws the groun flesh across the room rather than providing a groun child for the feast. A big difference, IMO.



Agreed. I would just love to know if humans created the grouns in addition to the worms. There was the one groun who seemed to be in transition; he had six limbs but had eyes; the eyes required the night vision goggles. Was he the first experiment, designed to be a worker in the deep tunnels? Then later, the grouns were perfected to where they didn't need eyes or night vision goggles at all to see in the dark? Annelyn walks through a chamber with big metal structures and a thousand grouns climbing all around "tending to them". Are these generators? Clearly, it's some type of machinery, and I wonder if the grouns haven't been maintaining it for a thousand thousand years. They probably don't even remember why they do it... much like the NW.
[ETA: What if the generators power a force field that protects the House of the Worm against the cold? Similar to the one on Worlorn? We are told early on that the yaga-la-hai don't really know what heats their House, but they don't think it's the sun.
In that case, the grouns would not only be the fire that burns against the cold, they would also be maintaining the shield that guards the realms of men. Annelyn also comes across some grouns wielding swords in the darkness... ]

The worms could have come before or after the grouns, but I suspect they came first. The outer row of metal teeth makes me wonder if they were originally created to dig the tunnels- maybe once the yaga-la-hai realized that the ships were not coming back and they would have to move underground permanently?

I just don't see how the grouns could have been a serious threat to the early (still technologically advanced) humans, or that these (still educated) humans would think it a good idea to create giant killer worms to battle these relatively harmless creatures. It seems more likely that the worms got out of control, and that's why the yaga-la-hai retreated to the upper levels. Their little prayer says the WW will come for them sooner or later - as if their founder (the last Changemaster) realized that the worms would eventually end the yaga-la-hai civilization. The grouns perhaps wanted to come up too, but they needed to maintain the generators, so they were engineered to die if exposed to light. Ha, now I've reached the level of darkness I was looking for. Maybe now I can move on, lol.

voice, There's still a few comments on this one from the original thread that was made before you split the series up that you might want to consider moving over into this thread. I had to search for my own comments to find them. I believe WWS and nanother were in on that conversation too.