1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man!

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Oct 11, 2016 9:34:33 GMT whitewolfstark likes this

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Post by voice on Oct 11, 2016 9:34:33 GMT

If those guys remind you of wookies, they should. Two years after this issue of ANALOG was released, Star Wars came out. I'm not saying George Lucas copied GRRM, but it sure looks like George Lucas copied John Schoenherr, who made these images for ANALOG based on GRRM's story.

The story is And Seven Times Never Kill Man! and it reads like a chapter straight out of ASOIAF.

Text:
docs.google.com/document/d/1XISslhgxWInjhTuPDibGuHDpcJ7VxGoezUrN2GUiKw8/edit

Audiobook (read by Roy Dotrice):

"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."

voice Administrator Absolution Bastard Posts: 9,520 Mini-Profile Theme: Example 2 Staff Mini-Profile Theme: Example 3 voice inherit Absolution Bastard Male Administrator 6 0 1 Apr 24, 2020 19:16:11 GMT 14,511 voice 9,520 Nightmare Moon Jul 22, 2015 20:02:17 GMT July 2015 Twitter voice Example 2 Example 3	1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Oct 24, 2016 6:49:58 GMT Lady Dyanna likes this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by voice on Oct 24, 2016 6:49:58 GMT prestonjacobs' review video:
	"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."

Maester Sam
Sansa Stark

There is nothing that the Others can do to men that men are not already doing to themselves.

Posts: 691

1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 23, 2016 2:24:24 GMT voice likes this

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Post by Maester Sam on Dec 23, 2016 2:24:24 GMT

I'm surprised this thread hasn't received more attention- this is one of my favorite GRRM stories!

I thought the ending especially was masterfully done- that twist really blew me away. Also, on a reread you'll notice that the first paragraph and the last are essentially the same- only that in the first, it's the Jaenshi children hanging from the walls, and in the last, the Steel Angels' own. I mean, Wow. I never saw it coming but after the fact I can see that the signs were there, thoughout the text.

Unfortunately, what actually happened is not a main focus of PJ's video, but to me it's the key question. So that's what I will try to sort out.

WArning: this is going to be a long post. I love this story, and there are so many Ice&Fire parallels. I am going to give it the attention it deserves. You have been warned.

Let's begin with the material used to make the pyramids. Here NeKrol and his trader partner are examining a piece of a broken pyramid:

It was as hard and smooth as glass, but stronger; colored a translucent red, yet so very dark it was almost black. "A plastic?" she asked, throwing it back to the ground.

NeKrol shrugged. "That was my very guess, but of course it is impossible. The Jaenshi work in bone and wood and sometimes metal, but plastic is centuries beyond them."

"Or behind them," Ryther said. "You say these worship pyramids are scattered all through the forest?"

"Yes, as far as I have ranged. But the Angels have smashed all those close to their valley, to drive the Jaenshi away. As they expand, and they will expand, they will smash others."

The pyramids are made of a material that the Jaenshi cannot produce. So either they produced the pyramids when they had a more advanced civilization, and then regressed, or, they were not the builders and someone else dropped these pyramids all over their planet. It's also possible that the Jaenshi were not the original inhabitants of this world; they could have landed there much like the Steel Angels, and the pyramids could have "converted" them to the religion of pyramid worship.

In either case, I assume we are all in agreement that the pyramids are affecting the minds of the Jaenshi, keeping them primitive and peaceful while controlling their numbers? The Jaenshi whose pyramids were destroyed and that did not join a different tribe soon began to question their lifestyle and were actually very curious creatures, strongly suggesting that the pyramids exert some sort of mind control.

My central thesis is going to be that the pyramids in ASTNKM are equivalent to the weirwoods in ASOIAF, with the Jaenshi roughly similar to the COTF.

Let's begin with an introduction to the Jaenshi:

The Jaenshi lived in clans (as neKrol thought of them) of twenty to thirty, each clan divided equally between adults and children, each having its own home-forest and worship pyramid. They did not build; they slept curled up in trees around their pyramid. For food, they foraged; juicy blue-black fruits grew everywhere, and there were three varieties of edible berries, a hallucinogenic leaf, and a soapy yellow root the Jaenshi dug for. NeKrol had found them to be hunters as well, though infrequently. A clan would go for months without meat, while the snuffling brown bushogs multiplied all around them, digging up roots and playing with the children.

Then suddenly, when the bushog population had reached some critical point, the Jaenshi spearmen would walk among them calmly, killing two out of every three, and that week great hog roasts would be held each night around the pyramid. Similar patterns could be discerned with the white-bodied tree slugs that sometimes covered the fruit trees like a plague, until the Jaenshi gathered them for a stew, and with the fruit-stealing pseudomonks that haunted the higher limbs.

The Jaenshi are part of a perfectly balanced ecology; they are vegetarian except when it becomes necessary to reduce herbivore numbers. They live in forests and sleep in trees, and they don't build. The only time we see them use violence is when they try to defend their pyramids, just like the COTF go to war to defend the weirwoods.

Here is a description of the waterfall clan's pyramid:

The clan's worship pyramid sat in the bottommost pool, on a flat gray stone in the middle of the eddies; taller than most Jaenshi, coming up to neKrol's chin, looking infinitely heavy and solid and immovable, a three-sided block of dark, dark red.

NeKrol was not fooled: he had seen other pyramids sliced to pieces by the lasers of the Steel Angels and shattered by the flames of their blasters; whatever powers the pyramids might have in Jaenshi myth, whatever mysteries might lie behind their origin, it was not enough to stay the swords of Bakkalon.

Like the weirwoods, the pyramids cannot defend themselves. If someone chooses to destroy them, they will be destroyed.

And now, an introduction to the resident greenseer of the waterfall clan:

Soon the old talker appeared.
He sat down next to neKrol, a tiny shriveled Jaenshi with only a few patches of dirty gray-white fur left to hide the wrinkles in his skin. He was toothless, clawless, feeble; but his eyes, wide and golden and pupilless as those of any Jaenshi, were still alert, alive. He was the talker of the waterfall folk, the one in closest communion with the worship pyramid.
Every clan had a talker.

The talker/greenseer is the link between the pyramid/weirwood and the rest of the population. This particular one seems quite old. I wonder if talkers have an expanded lifespan?

Here is a discussion had among some Steel Angel officers, trying to decide whether to kill more Jaenshi or if enough are dead:

Fieldbishop Lyon, blue-eyed and gaunt, indicated dissent. "The adults remain alive. The mature beast is more dangerous than the youngling, Squadfather."

"Not in this case," Weapons-master C'ara DaHan said. DaHan was a giant of a man, bald and bronze-colored, the chief of Psychological Weaponry and Enemy Intelligence. "Our studies show that, once the pyramid is destroyed, neither full-grown Jaenshi nor the immature pose any threat whatsoever to the children of Bakkalon. Their social structure virtually disintegrates. The adults either flee, hoping to join some other clan, or revert to near-animal savagery. They abandon the younglings, most of whom fend for themselves in a confused sort of way and offer no resistance when we take them. Considering the number of Jaenshi on our walls, and those reported slain by predators or each other, I strongly feel that Sword Valley is virtually clean of the animals. Winter is coming, Proctor, and much must be done. Squadfather Walman and his men should be set to other tasks."

I feel like this speaks for itself; the pyramids are what hold the Jaenshi together in their little clans. Without them, the Jaenshi are confused and unable to reorganize.
(Also, winter is coming. )

A little later, NeKrol is with one of the orphaned Jaenshi:

The Jaenshi that neKrol had come to think of as the bitter speaker looked at him out of eyes curiously darker than the soft gold of her brothers. "Below the snow, the god lies broken," she said, and even the soothing tones of the Jaenshi tongue could not hide the hardness in her voice. They stood at the very spot where neKrol had once taken Ryther, the spot where the pyramid of the people of the ring-of-stone once stood.

NeKrol was sheathed head to foot in a white thermosuit that clung too tightly, accenting every unsightly bulge. He looked out on Sword Valley from behind a dark blue plastifilm in the suit's cowl. But the Jaenshi, the bitter speaker, was nude, covered only by the thick gray fur of her winter coat. The strap of the hunting laser ran down between her breasts.

"Other gods beside yours will break unless the Steel Angels are stopped," neKrol said, shivering despite his thermosuit.

The bitter speaker seemed hardly to hear. "I was a child when they came, Arik. If they had left our god, I might be a child still. Afterwards, when the light went out and the glow inside me died, I wandered far from the ring-of-stone, beyond our own home forest, knowing nothing, eating where I could. Things are not the same in the dark valley. Bushogs honked at my passing, and charged me with their tusks, other Jaenshi threatened me and each other. I did not understand and I could not pray. Even when the Steel Angels found me, I did not understand, and I went with them to their city, knowing nothing of their speech. I remember the walls, and the children, many so much younger than me. Then I screamed and struggled; when I saw those on the ropes, something wild and godless stirred to life inside me." Her eyes regarded him, her eyes like burnished bronze. She shifted in the ankle-deep snow, curling a clawed hand around the strap of her laser.

The garden of Eden falls apart without the pyramids to keep everyone in line. It seems even the bushogs were affected by the pyramids. The Jaenshi are not naturally pacifists, the pyramids make them that way.
Also, now I wonder about those golden eyes... we see them in two cultures in ASOIAF, the COTF and the Naathi. Both very peaceful and not very advanced civilizations, small with golden eyes.

Back to the Angels, and Proctor Wyatt (the chosen future greenseer):

The chapel was dark and quiet. Flameglobes burned a dim, eerie red in either corner, and the rows of plain wooden benches were empty. Above the heavy altar, a slab of rough black stone, Bakkalon stood in holograph, so real he almost breathed; a boy, a mere boy, naked and milky white, with the wide eyes and blond hair of innocent youth. In his hand, half again taller than himself, was the great black sword.

Wyatt knelt before the projection, head bowed and very still. All through the winter his dreams had been dark and troubled, so each day he would kneel and pray for guidance. There was none else to seek but Bakkalon; he, Wyatt, was the Proctor, who led in battle and in faith. He alone must riddle his visions.

The leader of the Steel Angels has been having visions/dreams all winter. I wonder where they came from? :dunno

Now the others come in:

Alone they entered, while the Proctor knelt unmoving, and chose seats on the benches behind him, each apart from his fellows. Wyatt took no notice; he prayed only that his words would be correct, his vision true. When they were all there, he stood and turned to face them.

"Many are the worlds on which the children of Bakkalon have lived," he told them, "but none so blessed as this, our Corlos. A great time is on us, my brothers-in-arms. The pale child has come to me in my sleep, as once he came to the first Proctors in the years when the brotherhood was forged. He has given me visions."

Two things stand out here. First, the parallel to Melisandre: he has been having visions that he thinks are from his god, and he is interpreting them as best he can while pretending that he is more confident than he really is.
Second, and maybe more importantly - he is assuming that it was bakkalon, his god, who sent the visions. Many people probably assume such things; if they pray often and then they have visions, surely the visions come from their god.
Knowing that Proctor Wyatt's visions are not coming from his god, but from the pyramids, we must wonder how many ASOIAF characters are wrongly attributing their visions to their gods. And we must consider the possibility that even the COTF could be misunderstanding how the weirnet truly works.

This might be a good place to share my view of how the pyramids work. When new people land on the planet, the pyramids send their leader visions from his/her gods. We know they are not generic visions that are misinterpreted b/c later on we will see the Jaenshi build pyramids with bakkalon inside. So the pyramids send religion-specific visions and instruct the Jaenshi to build little pyramid art for that religion as well. The little pyramids enhance the visions and begin exerting real mind control, including on those surrounding the original person- ultimately culminating in a whole society worshipping and obeying the pyramids.
The one thing I haven't quite figured out is whether what we see happen to the Steel Angels in the end (burning the harvest, sacrificing their children) was only a step toward turning them into small, sustainable clans like the Jaenshi - there were simply too many at the start, so some had to go - or if this was a true revenge act and they will all be wiped out. But I'm getting ahead of myself... back to the story.

Here is a VERY interesting conversation between Proctor Wyatt, who has been having visions, and his weapons master who is worried by this:

"In the old days," C'ara DaHan was saying, "many weapons were used against the children of Bakkalon. Some, today, exist only in tales. Perhaps they never existed. Perhaps they are empty things, like the gods the soft men worship. I am only a Weaponsmaster; such knowledge is not mine.

"Yet there is a tale, my Proctor—one that troubles me. Once, it is said, in the long centuries of war, the Sons of Hranga loosed upon the seed of Earth foul vampires of the mind, the creatures men called soul-feeds. Their touch was invisible, but it crept across kilometers, farther than a man could see, farther than a laser could fire, and it brought madness. Visions, my Proctor, visions! False gods and foolish plans were put in the minds of men, and . . ."

"Silence," Wyatt said. His voice was hard, as cold as the night air that crackled around them and turned his breath to steam.

I feel fairly confident that this is indeed the purpose of the pyramids: they somehow link the worshipper to the H'rangan soul-feed creature that can put visions in their mind and use them to control the entire civilization. The story does, after all, take place on a former H'rangan slave world. The Jaenshi may have been slaves once, and after the H'rangans lost the war, they were left behind. But, b/c the pyramids were left behind with them, they continue to be mental slaves, generation after generation.

Any other civilization that lands on this world suffers the same fate.

It was not until the spring rains came and the bitter speaker began to question him that neKrol realized, with a start, how seldom any of the Jaenshi clans had ever asked him anything. Perhaps their social structure and their religion stifled their natural intellectual curiosity. The exiles were certainly eager enough, especially the bitter speaker. NeKrol could answer only a small portion of her questions of late, and even then she always had new ones to puzzle him with. He had begun to grow appalled with the extent of his own ignorance.

But then, so had the bitter speaker; unlike the clanned Jaenshi—did the religion make that much difference?—she would answer questions as well, and neKrol had tried quizzing her on many things that he'd wondered at. But most of the time she would only blink in bafflement, and begin to question herself.

So here even neKrol is realizing how different the Jaenshi are when they are away from their religion, away from the pyramids. The ones with pyramids neither ask nor answer questions; the rogue ones are curious and also answer when they can.

Another time he had asked her about the pyramids, and had gotten even less. "Build them?" she had said. "We did not build them, Arik. They have always been, like the rocks and the trees." But then she blinked. "But they are not like the rocks and the trees, are they?" And puzzled, she went away to talk to the others.

This reminds me of several objects and structures in ASOIAF that seem to have no known origin, and which were built using technologies long since forgotten. Perhaps people were "helped" to forget?

Next, here is neKroll, musing on his guerilla fighters:

None of them liked to take orders very well, and they fought constantly, going at each other with bared claws in struggles for social dominance. If neKrol had not warned them, he suspected they might even duel with the lasers. As for staying in good fighting shape, that too was a joke. Of the three females in the band, the bitter speaker was the only one who had not allowed herself to be impregnated. Since the Jaenshi usually gave birth in litters of four to eight, neKrol calculated that late summer would present them with an exile population explosion. And there would be more after that, he knew; the godless seemed to copulate almost hourly, and there was no such thing as Jaenshi birth control. He wondered how the clans kept their population so stable, but his charges didn't know that either.

"I suppose we sexed less," the bitter speaker said when he asked her, "but I was a child, so I would not really know. Before I came here, there was never the urge. I was just young, I would think." But when she said it, she scratched herself and seemed very unsure.

Interesting. So without their gods, the Jaenshi were entirely different: more violent, difficult to control (as oppose to all following the talkers without question), and sure to overrun the world with their numbers in no time. Whoever installed the first pyramid may actually have been doing them a favor (or at least thought they were), making their society into one that was ecologically adapted and sustainable, with no infighting and no overpopulation... but also no free will, apparently, and no curiosity.

The bitter speaker stood in the pool, the waters ankle-deep around her. She was facing the crowd and screeching at them, her voice strangely unlike the usual Jaenshi purr; in her scarf and rings, she looked absurdly out of place. As she talked, she waved the laser rifle she was holding in one hand. Wildly, passionately, hysterically, she was telling the gathered Jaenshi that the Steel Angels were coming, that they must leave at once, that they should break up and go into the forest and regroup at the trading base. Over and over again she said it.

But the clans were stiff and silent. No one answered, no one listened, no one heard. In full daylight, they were praying.

When the clans pray, they hear and see nothing. Mind control at its most obvious...

"Please," he said. "Come back with me. Leave them, leave them. You told them. I told them. Whatever happens, it is their doing, it is the fault of their fool religion."

"I cannot leave," the bitter speaker said. She seemed confused, as so often when neKrol had questioned her back at the base. "It seems I should, but somehow I know I must stay here. And the others will never go, even if I did. They feel it much more strongly. We must be here. To fight, to talk." She blinked. "I do not know why, Arik, but we must."

Once back at the pyramid, even the bitter speaker falls back under its control immediately.

Soon the Steel Angels arrive. They decide to destroy the pyramid, which still has talkers/greenseers around it.

"The talkers!" neKrol protested, "the blast will—" and he started to turn to show them. But the talkers were crawling away from the pyramid, one by one.

Behind him, the Angels were muttering. "A miracle!" one said hoarsely. "Our child! Our Lord!" cried another.

NeKrol stood paralyzed. The pyramid on the rock was no longer a reddish slab. Now it sparkled in the sunlight, a canopy of transparent crystal. And below that canopy, perfect in every detail, the pale child Bakkalon stood smiling, with his Demon-Reaver in his hand.

The Jaenshi talkers were scrambling from it now, tripping in the water in their haste to be away. NeKrol glimpsed the old talker, running faster than any despite his age. Even he seemed not to understand. The bitter speaker stood open-mouthed.

This seems proof of some very advanced technology: the pyramid can change its appearance to match different religions! I wonder how this is related to the different faces in the weirwoods; maybe they meant something to the people who first worshipped them? I wonder if they were carved at all, or simply appeared one day...

The trader turned. Half of the Steel Angels were on their knees, the rest had absent-mindedly lowered their arms and they froze in gaping wonder. The Squadmother turned to DaHan. "It is a miracle," she said. "As Proctor Wyatt has foreseen. The pale child walks upon this world."

But the Weaponsmaster was unmoved. "The Proctor is not here and this is no miracle," he said in a steely voice. "It is a trick of some enemy, and I will not be tricked. We will burn the blasphemous thing from the soil of Corlos." His arm flashed down.

Here is the key: if new cultures realize that the pyramids are tricking them, they can theoretically destroy them. Ultimately, this is only successful if all pyramids (at least within a certain range) are destroyed.
This makes me think of the First Men, who initially feared the weirwoods and wanted to cut them down. The COTF defended them, and a long war followed. Then, somehow, the Pact was agreed upon, and the FM started worshipping the weirwoods along with the COTF. We know that there are even human greenseers now- very accommodating of the trees.
Then the Andals arrive, and similarly soon decide that the weirwoods need to go. Why? What's the problem with these trees? Are humans really just naturally that destructive, or did they have a reason to get rid of them?

The Angels in the powerwagon must have been lax with awe; the blastcannon did not fire. DaHan turned in irritation. "It is no miracle!" he shouted. He began to raise his arm again.

Next to neKrol, the bitter speaker suddenly cried out. He looked over with alarm, and saw her eyes flash a brilliant yellow-gold. "The god!" she muttered softly. "The light returns to me!"
And the whine of powerbows sounded from the trees around them, and two long bolts shuddered almost simultaneously in the broad back of C'ara DaHan. The force of the shots drove the Weaponsmaster to his knees, smashed him against the ground.

"RUN!" neKrol screamed, and he shoved the bitter speaker with all his strength, and she stumbled and looked back at him briefly, her eyes dark bronze again and flickering with fear. Then, swiftly, she was running, her scarf aflutter behind her as she dodged toward the nearest green.

It's official- bronze eyes are the normal color, while the bright gold signifies active mind control. It's also interesting that in this instance, it seems as though the pyramid is ordering her and the other rebels to attack the Steel Angels. This confused me at first, until I realized it was specifically the weapons master who was killed. He was the one doubter, the one who was about to destroy the pyramid. So this actually fits very well; the "god" is willing to sacrifice countless Jaenshi in order to get the Steel Angels to worship the pyramids.

The rest happens AFTER the massacre of many of these Jaenshi, which leads to the death of neKroll.

Ryther shrugged; the crewman moved on. She turned her back on him and wandered slowly outside, to the edge of the spacefield where the Lights of Jolostar rested, its open ports bright with yellow light in the gathering gloom of dusk. The Jaenshi followed her, as they had followed her since she arrived; afraid, no doubt, that she would go away and leave them if they took their great bronze eyes off her for an instant.

Here neKroll's partner is being followed by the bitter speaker and two other Jaenshi who want her to take them off this world. Note that they all have bronze eyes now, not gold.

"Statues," Ryther muttered, half to herself and half to the Jaenshi. She shook her head. "Why did he do it?" she asked them, knowing they could not understand. "A trader of his experience? You could tell me, maybe, if you knew what I was saying. Instead of concentrating on deathcloths and such, on real Jaenshi art, why did Arik train you people to carve alien versions of human gods? He should have known no dealer would accept such obvious frauds. Alien art is alien." She sighed. "My fault, I suppose. We should have opened the crates." She laughed.

neKroll obviously did not train them. Somehow the pyramids knew about various human gods (probably from his own mind) and had the Jaenshi carve them - to be taken off world by a trader? I wonder if the little pyramids would still "work" on another planet? If so it would be quite the weapon indeed.

Here is Ryther, visiting with the Steel Angels upon her return:

Wyatt was twice as skeletal as she remembered him. He had been standing outdoors, near the foot of a huge platform-altar that had been erected in the middle of the city. A startlingly lifelike statue of Bakkalon, encased in a glass pyramid and set atop a high redstone plinth, threw a long shadow over the wooden altar. Beneath it, the squads of Angels were piling the newly-harvested neograss and wheat and the frozen carcasses of bushogs.

"We do not need your trade," the Proctor told her. "The World of Corlos is many-times-blessed, my child, and Bakkalon lives among us now. He has worked vast miracles, and shall work more. Our faith is in Him." Wyatt gestured toward the altar with a thin hand. "See? In tribute we burn our winter stores, for the pale child has promised that this year winter will not come. And He has taught us to cull ourselves in peace as once we were culled in war, so the seed of Earth grows ever stronger. It is a time of great new revelation!" His eyes had burned as he spoke to her; eyes darting and fanatic, vast and dark, yet strangely flecked with gold.

Two things here:
1) Wow, the pyramid god is actively harming the Steel Angels. We haven't really seen it harm the Jaenshi directly, except perhaps that last incident where the attack on the weapons master resulted in a massacre.
2) Those golden eyes again!! But only flecked with gold in the new recruits - presumably they will turn all the way gold in time. Eyes with golded flecks, of course, remind me of Tywin Lannister...

And lastly, of course, the grand finale:

As quickly as she could, Ryther had left the City of the Steel Angels, trying hard not to look back at the walls. But when she had climbed the hills, back toward the trading base, she had come to the ring-of-stone, to the broken pyramid where Arik had taken her. Then Ryther found that she could not resist, and powerless she had turned for a final glance out over Sword Valley. The sight had stayed with her.

Outside the walls the Angel children hung, a row of small white-smocked bodies still and motionless at the end of long ropes. They had gone peacefully, all of them, but death is seldom peaceful; the older ones, at least, died quickly, necks broken with a sudden snap. But the small pale infants had the nooses round their waists, and it had seemed clear to Ryther that most of them had simply hung there till they starved.

As she stood, remembering, the crewman came from inside neKrol's broken bubble. "Nothing," he reported. "All statues."

Ryther nodded.

"Go?" the bitter speaker said. "Jamson' World?"
"Yes," she replied, her eyes staring past the waiting Lights of Jolostar, out toward the black primal forest. The Heart of Bakkalon was sunk forever. In a thousand thousand woods and a single city, the clans had begun to pray.

If it was simply a matter of population control, it doesn't seem necessary to have hung the children from the walls. There are more humane ways of killing. [side note - brainwashing/religion and killing your own kids is something that we may yet see in ASOIAF as well; in fact, one could argue that with Craster, something similar was already occurring]. So was this at least in part a revenge act?

All in all, one of the best endings I've ever read. Deeply disturbing, of course, but it made me immediately want to read the story again - which was rewarding b/c we do see foreshadowing all along the way. The very last sentence seals the deal: the Steel Angels have been assimilated into the lifestyle of a pyramid worshipper; they are just another clan praying to a pyramid.

“In Qohor he is the Black Goat, in Yi Ti the Lion of Night, in Westeros the Stranger. All men must bow to him in the end, no matter if they worship the Seven or the Lord of Light, the Moon Mother or the Drowned God or the Great Shepherd. All mankind belongs to him... else somewhere in the world would be a folk who lived forever. Do you know of any folk who live forever?”

Maester Sam
Sansa Stark

There is nothing that the Others can do to men that men are not already doing to themselves.

Posts: 691

1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 27, 2016 19:19:45 GMT sagenadia likes this

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Post by Maester Sam on Dec 27, 2016 19:19:45 GMT

A few more thoughts...

First- was the Pact a trick by the COTF? They lured the FM - who up until then had been destroying trees, which was the whole reason for the war- to the Isle of Faces, where every tree received a face. This is a mysterious place in a lake called the God's Eye; clearly a location with strong religious significance. All we know is that the wise men of both races met there, and by the time they left, the FM too were worshipping the trees. WTF? Never mind the land division in favor of the FM, that was probably done so the rest of them would agree to the arrangement. But remember that the COTF and FM were at war ONLY b/c the FM were destroying the weirwoods. And they were winning. Yet all of a sudden, they agreed that the trees must be prayed to and protected; they dropped whatever religion they may have had before (we don't even hear about any original FM religion!) to worship the trees. Something smells extremely fishy here, don't you think?

Then, as PJ mentioned, there is the issue of technological regression. We are told the FM didn't build round towers, but ancient round towers are found in FM castles like Winterfell. We are told they only used bronze, yet we have accounts of the Last Hero using "dragonsteel". And so on. There are entire threads dedicated to this topic. It is often assumed that some catastrophe caused the regression - but what if that wasn't it? What if, every time a new civilization landed on Westeros and started building their various structures, they sooner or later met the COTF and were converted to their religion? After that, like the Steel Angels, they lost interest in technology and progress; they forgot how to build such things and forgot that they ever knew how to do it. Instead of bringing a pyramid into their city, they planted a weirwood in their castle.

Like the Jaenshi, the COTF don't build, they don't farm, and they don't fight except to protect their religious structures. The FM are not quite as perfectly Jaenshi, but from an ecological standpoint they do seem well adjusted. We don't hear of them expanding their cities, building new castles, etc. Their population size seems stable. In fact, "extra" men are sent to the Wall where they are kept busy with meaningless tasks and will not reproduce. They don't take part in wars, either. Hmmm.
But there is another race that may have been "simplified" by the weirwoods- and that is the race of the giants.
The giants? But they are just big hairy animals! Well yes, today. But that wasn't always so; we have legends of giants having castles and kidnapping people - so clearly, they were not always as primitive as they are now. Food for thought...

Lastly, and this is not a theory that's well developed yet, but still... If, after the Pact, the FM were divided into the True Believers and the, um, others, this would not only provide a reason for a future conflict - the others wanting to take back the world for non-brainwashed people, by any means necessary - but also would offer a reason for why the faction that our 'good guys' (ancestors of today's remaining FM families) fought during the LN became known as the Others. It's simply not a term one would normally use for a race of non-humans, IMO. It is used to describe humans that are not part of the group, not part of the tree worshippers.
These Others, not brainwashed like the rest, retained the ancient technologies. They have stealth armor and vastly superior weapons. They may or may not have engineered themselves to survive in the cold wastes; otherwise they found some other way to live there (magic does seem to be "real" in this world so I won't rule out that explanation- they simply had gifts that allowed them to adapt to the Lands of Always Winter). They live in the far North b/c it's one of the few places in Westeros where weirwoods don't grow...

Last Edit: Dec 27, 2016 19:27:00 GMT by Maester Sam

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 27, 2016 22:46:55 GMT sagenadia likes this

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Post by voice on Dec 27, 2016 22:46:55 GMT

I finally reread it Maester Sam :cheers

I forgot the surprise ending because I completely misunderstood it! I read it so quickly I thought the Steel Angels had simply hung more Jaenshi children from their walls. I was grossly mistaken.

Needless to say, now that my reading comprehension has been improved, this story is far more climactic and disturbing and absolutely amazing. I can see why you like it!

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

In either case, I assume we are all in agreement that the pyramids are affecting the minds of the Jaenshi, keeping them primitive and peaceful while controlling their numbers? The Jaenshi whose pyramids were destroyed and that did not join a different tribe soon began to question their lifestyle and were actually very curious creatures, strongly suggesting that the pyramids exert some sort of mind control.

There can be no doubt, imo, that the pyramids control the Jaenshi utterly and completely. Watch the eye colors...

(Edit... now that I've reached the end of your analysis, I see you've already noted the shift in eye color... so great minds think alike

here are some add'l quotes to support your argument.)

He sat down next to neKrol, a tiny shriveled Jaenshi with only a few patches of dirty gray-white fur left to hide the wrinkles in his skin. He was toothless, clawless, feeble; but his eyes, wide and golden and pupilless as those of any Jaenshi, were still alert, alive. He was the talker of the waterfall folk, the one in closest communion with the worship pyramid.

Every clan had a talker.

Okay... so at one time, EVERY SINGLE JAENSHI had golden and pupiless eyes.

The Jaenshi that neKrol had come to think of as the bitter speaker looked at him out of eyes curiously darker than the soft gold of her brothers. "Below the snow, the god lies broken," she said, and even the soothing tones of the Jaenshi tongue could not hide the hardness in her voice. They stood at the very spot where neKrol had once taken Ryther, the spot where the pyramid of the people of the ring-of-stone once stood

Her eyes are changing/reverting to their natural state.

The line in bold (above) seems so relevant to ASOIAF that I had to point it out. Below the snow, the god lies broken.

Winter is not the god-breaker. That was man.

Rather, in GRRM-speak anyways, 'winter' is the gray deathcloth of the gods:

Before full darkness had descended, a small pile of goods sat by his right hand; a matched set of redstone knives, a gray deathcloth woven from the fur of an elderly Jaenshi by his widow and friends (with his face wrought upon it in the silky golden hairs of a pseudomonk), a bone spear with tracings that reminded neKrol of the runes of Old Earth legend; and statues.

Now this, the deathcloth, seems to bespeak a genuinely "Jaenshi" religious tradition, does it not? I don't see what benefit the pyramids would gain from such deathcloths. So I'm wondering if that is one bit of their natural identity that remains to them.

Also, there's this (which I assume comes from after the 'bitter speaker' has been removed from pyramidal influence):

"Statues," Ryther muttered, half to herself and half to the Jaenshi. She shook her head. "Why did he do it?" she asked them, knowing they could not understand. "A trader of his experience? You could tell me, maybe, if you knew what I was saying. Instead of concentrating on deathcloths and such, on real Jaenshi art, why did Arik train you people to carve alien versions of human gods? He should have known no dealer would accept such obvious frauds. Alien art is alien."

She sighed. "My fault, I suppose. We should have opened the crates." She laughed.

The bitter speaker stared at her. "Arik deathcloth. Gave."

Ryther nodded, abstractly. She had it now, hanging just above her bunk; a strange small thing, woven partly from Jaenshi fur and mostly from long silken strands of flame red hair. On it, gray against the red, was a crude but recognizable caricature of Arik neKrol. She had wondered at that, too. The tribute of a widow? A child? Or just a friend? What had happened to Arik during the year the Lights had been away? If only she had been back on time, then . . . but she'd lost three months on Jamison's World, checking dealer after dealer in an effort to unload the worthless statuettes. It had been middle autumn before the Lights of Jolostar returned to Corlos, to find neKrol's base in ruins, the Angels already gathering in their harvests.

I'm thinking Arik's guerrillas made this deathcloth for him after he died.

But anyhoo, moving on... Back to the shift in eye-color:

On the rock at the center of the pool, with the waterfall behind them as a backdrop, the talkers pressed around the pyramid of the waterfall folk. They were closer together than even those in the grass, and each had his palms flat against the sides. One, thin and frail, sat on the shoulders of another so that he too might touch. NeKrol tried to count them and gave up; the group was too dense, a blurred mass of gray-furred arms and golden eyes, the pyramid at their center, dark and unmovable as ever.

Goldeye is quite conagious. Don't forget to wash your hands, kids.

Next to neKrol, the bitter speaker suddenly cried out. He looked over with alarm, and saw her eyes flash a brilliant yellow-gold. "The god!" she muttered softly. "The light returns to me!" And the whine of powerbows sounded from the trees around them, and two long bolts shuddered almost simultaneously in the broad back of C'ara DaHan. The force of the shots drove the Weaponsmaster to his knees, smashed him against the ground.

GRRM's take on the 'light of god' motif is quite nefarious.

It puts a whole new spin on imagery GRRM grew up with (as did many of us), and began to doubt from a very young age (as did many of us).

Sheep to the slaughter (who once followed the savage tradition of killing their own children, if "God" told them to):

And the en-light-ened shepherd who now guides them:

Behold the fiery heart of the Lord of Light. :devil

I'll suspend my blasphemy now, and return to our enlightened eye colors...

"We do not need your trade," the Proctor told her. "The World of Corlos is many-times-blessed, my child, and Bakkalon lives among us now. He has worked vast miracles, and shall work more. Our faith is in Him." Wyatt gestured toward the altar with a thin hand. "See? In tribute we burn our winter stores, for the pale child has promised that this year winter will not come. And He has taught us to cull ourselves in peace as once we were culled in war, so the seed of Earth grows ever stronger. It is a time of great new revelation!" His eyes had burned as he spoke to her; eyes darting and fanatic, vast and dark, yet strangely flecked with gold.

You beat me to the Tywin comparison, so I'll offer another.

The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. "What are they?" she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.

Must mention Cersei II, AFFC, though, because they are exactly like the Proctor's after he's become enraptured with Corlos:

Her father's eyes had always been unsettling; pale green, almost luminous, flecked with gold. His eyes could see inside you, could see how weak and worthless and ugly you were down deep. When he looked at you, you knew.

The Proctor is seeing how weak and worthless Ryther's trade goods are. And while Tywin did dote upon Cersei in his own way, one could say that both he and his daughter looked down upon Tyrion in this same way.

And if I might, this brings to mind my pet theory regarding Tywin & Rhaegar. I believe Tywin raised Rhaegar as his own ward and foster son, grooming him not only to be a prince worthy of the Iron Throne, but grooming him as a suitable husband for his favorite child. Thus, that Rhaegal would be thusly named, and share Tywin's coloring, makes complete sense to me.

I've never given much credence to A+J=Tyrion, but this might push me over that edge. It would make for a sublime poetic justice if Tyrion, the son Tywin never wanted, went on to mount the dragon named for the son Tywin always wanted, in Rhaegal.

Tyrion, a boy plagued with dragondreams, fostered by a Lion who sought to bind his house to that of the dragon. Tywin wanted Rhaegar to marry his daughter, but deserves the Imp who lives only to kill her.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Agreed. But I am of the mind the trees did eventually produce antibodies to man, horse, sword, and flame. :devil

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Like the weirwoods, the pyramids cannot defend themselves. If someone chooses to destroy them, they will be destroyed.

True. But, not without repercussions. In destroying the pyramids, men destroy themselves.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

The talker/greenseer is the link between the pyramid/weirwood and the rest of the population. This particular one seems quite old. I wonder if talkers have an expanded lifespan?

He does seem quite old. But oddly, he is faster than his clan mates:

The Jaenshi talkers were scrambling from it now, tripping in the water in their haste to be away. NeKrol glimpsed the old talker, running faster than any despite his age. Even he seemed not to understand. The bitter speaker stood open-mouthed.

I'm not sure what to make of this, but it is rather strange.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

I feel like this speaks for itself; the pyramids are what hold the Jaenshi together in their little clans. Without them, the Jaenshi are confused and unable to reorganize.
(Also, winter is coming. )

Yes! Winter is coming! (I liked that bit as well...it seems GRRM has been using impending Winter as a looming doom for quite some time.)

And yes, I agree again. It does speak for itself. The pyramids are responsible for absolutely everything NeKrol recognizes as Jaenshi society. And note GRRM's word choice (in bold):

The Jaenshi lived in clans (as neKrol thought of them) of twenty to thirty, each clan divided equally between adults and children, each having its own home-forest and worship pyramid.

As soon as GRRM defines the social unit for the reader, he casts doubt upon it with this phrasing. NeKrol thought of them as living in clans, but the Jaenshi did not define themselves in any such terms. This tendency for people to anthropomorphize non-humans is quite real. We do it with animals. We even do it with machines ("My computer has a virus..." "The car doesn't want to start..." "My phone died...").

I freely admit I do this with the children of the forest. I tend to see them as noble savages, but they are in fact, not human.

And in asoiaf, we have several characters who do this as well. Bran does, most obviously. And Ygritte humanizes Giants.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Great point. I can only agree. But if the weirnet creates pacifists, why did the cotf always war with the Giants? And why has Westeros remained so violent?

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Also, now I wonder about those golden eyes... we see them in two cultures in ASOIAF, the COTF and the Naathi. Both very peaceful and not very advanced civilizations, small with golden eyes.

I don't have it handy, but markg171 or whitewolfstark might... GRRM once quipped that his fans pay far too much attention to the eye colors of his characters.

Given this subtle, yet old precendent (ASTNKM was published in 1975) such a statement seems purposefully misleading.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

The leader of the Steel Angels has been having visions/dreams all winter. I wonder where they came from? :dunno

While I'm not quite ready to name Planetos a Hrangan Slave Planet, I agree that the Proctor's visions are coming from these monuments, or perhaps, from the planet itself.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Preach!

And I think this is GRRM's enduring stance on all religious leaders. They speak with an air of certainty they never truly possess. It reminds me of a certain segment of the fanbase.

LOL

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Second, and maybe more importantly - he is assuming that it was bakkalon, his god, who sent the visions. Many people probably assume such things; if they pray often and then they have visions, surely the visions come from their god.

Surely.

It is a fascinating indictment of the nature of spirituality, is it not? GRRM is at once quite athiestic in his treatment of it, yet, embues arcane powers to this tree or that pyramid that lend the experiences themselves some kind of merit.

Is spirituality merely the result of external manipulations? And if so, aren't those external manipulations in and of themselves divine?

GRRM seems to wrestle with this conundrum quite often.

A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

"Skinchanger?" said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me? Skinchangers and wargs belonged in Old Nan's stories, not in the world he had lived in all his life. Yet here, in this strange bleak wilderness of rock and ice, it was not hard to believe.

"The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?"

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Knowing that Proctor Wyatt's visions are not coming from his god, but from the pyramids, we must wonder how many ASOIAF characters are wrongly attributing their visions to their gods. And we must consider the possibility that even the COTF could be misunderstanding how the weirnet truly works.

Yes. prestonjacobs would certainly agree. I do as well, but I can't help but feel the weirnet is more genuine in nature than these Hrangan soul-sucks. But even as I say that, I am reminded of my own pet miasma theory, and the words lose their mass.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

I like it.

Rather than be religious leaders deserving of merit, such avatars of piety are actually the weakest-minded -- those most willing to put on rose tinted glasses.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

The one thing I haven't quite figured out is whether what we see happen to the Steel Angels in the end (burning the harvest, sacrificing their children) was only a step toward turning them into small, sustainable clans like the Jaenshi - there were simply too many at the start, so some had to go - or if this was a true revenge act and they will all be wiped out. But I'm getting ahead of myself... back to the story.

It is indeed a pressing question, given the fate of our Westerosi First Men.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Here is a VERY interesting conversation between Proctor Wyatt, who has been having visions, and his weapons master who is worried by this:

"In the old days," C'ara DaHan was saying, "many weapons were used against the children of Bakkalon. Some, today, exist only in tales. Perhaps they never existed. Perhaps they are empty things, like the gods the soft men worship. I am only a Weaponsmaster; such knowledge is not mine.

"Yet there is a tale, my Proctor—one that troubles me. Once, it is said, in the long centuries of war, the Sons of Hranga loosed upon the seed of Earth foul vampires of the mind, the creatures men called soul-feeds. Their touch was invisible, but it crept across kilometers, farther than a man could see, farther than a laser could fire, and it brought madness. Visions, my Proctor, visions! False gods and foolish plans were put in the minds of men, and . . ."

"Silence," Wyatt said. His voice was hard, as cold as the night air that crackled around them and turned his breath to steam.

I'm wondering if the pyramids themselves are not the power. I'm thinking they took on the shape of stone pyramids for the Jaenshi. Then, later, the power took on the shape of the Pale Child Bakkalon for the Steel Angels.

Remember, the bitter speaker did not know how the pyramids came to exist. Nor did she know stories of the gods the carvers made for trade, even once she was lucid. It seems to me that the power on the planet Corlos may instead reside within the plinths of translucent red glass (obsidian?). Upon these plinths, a totemic effigy is created that suits whatever race is intended to be enslaved.

I'm thinking the Jaenshi once revered pyramids just as the Steel Angels revere Bakkalon. The power manipulating each race took a while to get the image right for the latter. First, it offered large breasted fertility goddesses and Jaenshi/human-esque war gods.

It took some time to crack the code of the Steel Angels (the planet's new dominant race/predator), but once it did, it used the hack with increasing prowess.

If weirwoods are truly their counterpart, it can only be because the manipulative power of Westeros knew that cotf (then later, First Men) would revere the trees.

If GRRM is using my love of trees against me, I'll never forgive him for it. LOL

Back to the obsidian-like plastic/glass... here are some references:

Frozen Fire?
"Interesting," she said finally, after studying the shard for several minutes. It was as hard and smooth as glass, but stronger; colored a translucent red, yet so very dark it was almost black. "A plastic?" she asked, throwing it back to the ground.
Obsidian Daggers?
Before full darkness had descended, a small pile of goods sat by his right hand; a matched set of redstone knives, a gray deathcloth woven from the fur of an elderly Jaenshi by his widow and friends (with his face wrought upon it in the silky golden hairs of a pseudomonk), a bone spear with tracings that reminded neKrol of the runes of Old Earth legend; and statues.
A Glass Candle?
Wyatt was twice as skeletal as she remembered him. He had been standing outdoors, near the foot of a huge platform-altar that had been erected in the middle of the city. A startlingly lifelike statue of Bakkalon, encased in a glass pyramid and set atop a high redstone plinth, threw a long shadow over the wooden altar. Beneath it, the squads of Angels were piling the newly-harvested neograss and wheat and the frozen carcasses of bushogs.

In other words, how do we know these idols even exist? I think they could be mere hallucinations of a manipulated mind, or holograms.

In any case, it seems they are customizable to meet the religious needs of future slaves. :devil

And we know the Jaenshi should not be able to create such a lifelike object, particularly one encased in "glass."

NeKrol shrugged. "That was my very guess, but of course it is impossible. The Jaenshi work in bone and wood and sometimes metal, but plastic is centuries beyond them."

Unless the Jaenshi were holding out on us, methinks this statue of Bakkalon was not their work.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Indeed. But.... Leaf was curious, and she even answers questions.

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II
"Who are you?" Meera Reed was asking.
Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold.
They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.
"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."
Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."
"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."
"Two hundred years?" said Meera.
The child smiled. "Men, they are the children."
"Do you have a name?" asked Bran. "When I am needing one." She waved her torch toward the black crack in the back wall of the cave. "Our way is down. You must come with me now."
Bran shivered again. "The ranger ..."
"He cannot come."
"They'll kill him."
"No. They killed him long ago. Come now. It is warmer down deep, and no one will hurt you there. He is waiting for you."

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

This reminds me of several objects and structures in ASOIAF that seem to have no known origin, and which were built using technologies long since forgotten. Perhaps people were "helped" to forget?

It is certainly curious. And I can no longer dismiss the notion that Planetos is an interregnum planet. The Pale Child Bakkalon resides in the House of Black and White:

A Feast for Crows - Arya II

Worshipers came to the House of Black and White every day. Most came alone and sat alone; they lit candles at one altar or another, prayed beside the pool, and sometimes wept. A few drank from the black cup and went to sleep; more did not drink. There were no services, no songs, no paeans of praise to please the god. The temple was never full. From time to time, a worshiper would ask to see a priest, and the kindly man or the waif would take him down into the sanctum, but that did not happen often.
Thirty different gods stood along the walls, surrounded by their little lights. The Weeping Woman was the favorite of old women, Arya saw; rich men preferred the Lion of Night, poor men the Hooded Wayfarer. Soldiers lit candles to Bakkalon, the Pale Child, sailors to the Moon-Pale Maiden and the Merling King. The Stranger had his shrine as well, though hardly anyone ever came to him. Most of the time only a single candle stood flickering at his feet. The kindly man said it did not matter. "He has many faces, and many ears to hear."

And also returned in GRRM's reading of TWOW Damphair chapter:

Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith…even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Indeed. It is the same ideal we find in wight-hood. They are the perfect version of man for Westeros. Their horses consume no grain. They burn no trees. And they are honest in their mindless bouts of violence, rather than hiding daggers behind shallow smiles.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

When the clans pray, they hear and see nothing. Mind control at its most obvious...

Yes. I am curious if it isn't a little different in ASOIAF. Bran is able to sense both his body and Summer's. And Bloodraven is able to communicate with Bran verbally, even though he is long since rooted to the trees.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Yes. Very cool shift in her persona there. One that we see in the Ghost of High Heart, Beric in his cave, and Theon in the Ghost of Winterfell chapter. The trees definitely manipulate some characters directly.

It may be that the Iron Born are right in the end, with their demonization of the blood-consuming trees.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Ominous indeed. I posited something similar in Heresy years ago. It was something like the trees' faces changing to match those they are requesting. For example, WF's tree would have become Stark-faced because it wants to consume the bodies/blood/memories of House Stark.

And if the faces are carved... well that just brings to mind these simple Jaenshi wood-carvers. Tis a thin line between divine inspiration and mere manipulation by a higher form of sentience in GRRM's world. If the latter be true, the cotf and First Men were duped into carving the symbols that would enslave them. The more I think about it, this seems quite likely in GRRM's view of religion and war.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Definitely both, imo.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Yup. It's official.

Wish I'd have read your whole post before writing the first part of my response! LOL

And yes, definitely agree that the power at work wanted the weapons master dead, and the rebels were merely tools to that end.

In fact, it might be that this was neKrol's misguided purpose all along -- to prepare the bitter speaker and her fellow rebels not to usurp the Steel Angels, but to kill any skeptics among them once the new idol was unveiled.

It's hard to imagine just how creepy their religion is, so here's a nice picture to help. LOL

Bakkalon, The Pale Child

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Here neKroll's partner is being followed by the bitter speaker and two other Jaenshi who want her to take them off this world. Note that they all have bronze eyes now, not gold.

Yup. Noticed that. Very cool stuff. Bronze and gold are not all that dissimilar in terms of color, anyway... but in terms of luminescence, they differ a great deal. I can't help but be reminded of our starry-eyed Others, the rider of the Ice Dragon in ASOIAF, and the driver of the Ice Wagon in Bitterblooms.

And we do have the golden eyes of death in ASOIAF. I want to say they were in Jaime's weirwood dream...?

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

It would. But I wonder if the pyramids weren't simply an attempt to seduce neKroll.

If so, they worked.

If they were intended as mass-distributed snares, I don't think they did. Ryther couldn't find anyone who wanted them. So if they were meant to enrapture people off-planet, they don't seem very effective.

But, it may be that the knockoffs would entice newcomers/traders to Corlos as neKrol feared.

Next up:

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Wyatt was twice as skeletal as she remembered him. He had been standing outdoors, near the foot of a huge platform-altar that had been erected in the middle of the city. A startlingly lifelike statue of Bakkalon, encased in a glass pyramid and set atop a high redstone plinth, threw a long shadow over the wooden altar. Beneath it, the squads of Angels were piling the newly-harvested neograss and wheat and the frozen carcasses of bushogs.

"We do not need your trade," the Proctor told her. "The World of Corlos is many-times-blessed, my child, and Bakkalon lives among us now. He has worked vast miracles, and shall work more. Our faith is in Him." Wyatt gestured toward the altar with a thin hand. "See? In tribute we burn our winter stores, for the pale child has promised that this year winter will not come. And He has taught us to cull ourselves in peace as once we were culled in war, so the seed of Earth grows ever stronger. It is a time of great new revelation!" His eyes had burned as he spoke to her; eyes darting and fanatic, vast and dark, yet strangely flecked with gold.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

1) Wow indeed!
2) I can only agree.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

Craster for sure, but he ain't the only one...

"The Others," Old Nan agreed. "Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks." Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, "So, child. This is the sort of story you like?"

While the circumstances are way different, the reasoning is much the same. The Proctor had the epiphany that the Steel Angels ought cull their numbers in peace, just as they are culled in war. So too did mothers in the Long Night believe it kinder to cull their numbers by murdering their own children.

Then, of course, there is the murder of dragonspawn by gold-flecked Tywin to please the Usurper, the attempted murder of Dany and Rhaego, and the murders of Robert's bastards.

Shireen may be the next child given to the "one true god," I fear.

Dec 27, 2016 1:57:18 GMT Maester Sam said:

All in all, one of the best endings I've ever read. Deeply disturbing, of course, but it made me immediately want to read the story again - which was rewarding b/c we do see foreshadowing all along the way. The very last sentence seals the deal: the Steel Angels have been assimilated into the lifestyle of a pyramid worshipper; they are just another clan praying to a pyramid.

Wonderful post, Maester Sam! :cheers

Upon this reread the story completely changed for me, since I totally missed the twist the first time around. The Steel Angels did indeed become just one more "clan" praying to a slave master.

This notion, that group-think is a false utopia is also found in A Song for Lya. I think the Greeshka in that story provide a better analogue for our children of the forest, but I must admit, you make a very well reasoned and compelling argument that has me shifting uncomfortably in my weirwood office chair.

My reply became so lengthy that I forgot many of the points I intended to make. I'll post them when (if) I can recall them.

Last Edit: Dec 27, 2016 22:51:32 GMT by voice

"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."

Maester Sam
Sansa Stark

There is nothing that the Others can do to men that men are not already doing to themselves.

Posts: 691

1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 28, 2016 17:54:02 GMT voice likes this

Quote

Post by Maester Sam on Dec 28, 2016 17:54:02 GMT

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

I finally reread it Maester Sam :cheers

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Hahaha, that explains it! It's not normally an ending one would forget, lol.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

here are some add'l quotes to support your argument.)

Yeah, those eyes really give it away. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the Others are themselves being controlled, with their blue eyes and all...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

The line in bold (above) seems so relevant to ASOIAF that I had to point it out. Below the snow, the god lies broken.

Winter is not the god-breaker. That was man.

Yes, this line stood out to me as well, though I wasn't sure what to make of it. I definitely agree that winter didn't break the god, but man.
In this story, winter does temporarily delay the advance of man and the destruction of the gods. By springtime, the Steel Angels' commander (Proctor Wyatt) no longer wishes to destroy the Jaenshi and their pyramids; instead, he is confident that they are not a threat and will move aside for the Steel Angels. He is now also mentally ready to accept Pyramid-Bakkalon; when his men bring back the small carved pyramids, he doesn't call this blasphemy but is convinced that Bakkalon has walked among the Jaenshi.

It's too bad the timelines don't quite fit for this in ASOIAF, with the Pact occurring before the LN.

Oh, something else about that line. arrysfleas has a cool theory that the Drowned God of the ironborn is in fact a greenseer in a flooded cave beneath the weirwood grove that is now Nagga's ribs. Beneath the snow the god lies broken. Beneath the waves the drowned god sits in his watery halls. Not that much of a stretch, is it? What if the Grey King was the one to flood the cave, and in doing so, freed the ironborn from the demon tree's rule? We know he brought enlightenment (fire, longships) to the ironborn, which would fit with a newfound freedom of the mind...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Rather, in GRRM-speak anyways, 'winter' is the gray deathcloth of the gods:

Before full darkness had descended, a small pile of goods sat by his right hand; a matched set of redstone knives, a gray deathcloth woven from the fur of an elderly Jaenshi by his widow and friends (with his face wrought upon it in the silky golden hairs of a pseudomonk), a bone spear with tracings that reminded neKrol of the runes of Old Earth legend; and statues.

I agree, the deathcloths seem to be genuine Jaenshi works, likely left over from before the pyramids. I suppose there was no reason for the pyramids to stop this tradition?

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Behold the fiery heart of the Lord of Light. :devil

Yes, both the Lord of Light and the Great Shepherd are clearly copied from Christianity. It's funny/sad, that R'hllor seems so "evil" and yet Christians burned people at the stake routinely , most famously during the Salem witch trials. If there is one common thread in virtually all of GRRM's works, it is that religion a) is a hoax, and b ) causes people to do terrible things they would never do otherwise.

Which again makes it unlikely, IMO, that in the end, the Old Gods will be the solution somehow, or that they alone are "true" gods. Their intention may be to maintain a stable ecology in Westeros, but humans by their very nature don't fit into such an ecosystem - not unless they are carefully controlled.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

You beat me to the Tywin comparison, so I'll offer another.

The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. "What are they?" she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.

Ooooh, very interesting! Still doesn't make me like the idea of any Lannister riding a dragon, but it may be evidence pointing in that direction.

To me, the unceremonious death of the banshee in Dying of the Light makes me question the role of the dragons going forward. I think it is virtually impossible that Dany, Jon and Tyrion will be the three to ride them for any reason, but definitely not to fight the Others. In The Ice Dragon, normal fire dragons are useless in winter and must retreat south until spring. What a twist that would be, lol! It wouldn't surprise me if the Ironborn got at least one, maybe both from Meereen, and I expect they will all be dead by the end of the series. There is no place for them in the world that man has made...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

And if said dragon was then used to destroy the rest of Tywin's family...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Agreed. But I am of the mind the trees did eventually produce antibodies to man, horse, sword, and flame. :devil

Yes, the trees fought back, absolutely. Perhaps... the antibodies (or just winter?) killed any FM not holed up in a castle. Every castle had a godswood, so the nobility was likely already under control. By killing off everyone else, only the obedient followers of the Old Gods remained, with nobody to try to snap them out of it.

Just like in the present story, the winter would have given the trees time to convert many FM. Everyone was holed up in the castles, with only the trees to pray to for help. We see in the later ADWD chapters that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that in such times, people will turn to any god that they think may help them. Stannis starts burning people when the storm doesn't let up, and seems open to the idea of sacrificing Theon to the weirwood. (This is key: a southern king and follower of R'hllor, sacrificing king's blood to a tree!!). Theon himself, a follower of the Drowned God, prays to the Winterfell weirwood and is also open to being sacrificed to a weirwood. It seems one winter storm is enough to start converting non-FM to the Old Gods; imagine what a 10-year winter could do.

One thing I'm still not sure about is why the Others were even necessary in this situation. A winter lasting a generation would have killed 99% of all humans anyway; why was there a need for an Ice army at all?

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

True. But, not without repercussions. In destroying the pyramids, men destroy themselves.

Yes... but only b/c some pyramids are still around. I imagine if ALL pyramids were destroyed, the spell would break and all subjugated races would be free.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Great point. I can only agree. But if the weirnet creates pacifists, why did the cotf always war with the Giants? And why has Westeros remained so violent?

Well, the Giants were their bane and their brothers. Maybe they were their bane first, and their brothers after they started praying to the trees?

I don't know that the weirnet truly creates pacifists. Like the pyramids, I imagine the goal is a balanced ecosystem, and the end justifies the means. To get there, violence is needed. The pyramid caused the rebel Jaenshi to kill the Steel Angel weapons master, and this led to a massacre of many Jaenshi. The Steel Angels also were forced to kill their own children, and most of the adults will starve in the coming winter. Similarly, wars between believers and nonbelievers would have been "necessary" in Westeros as well.

I also wonder if there weren't simply too many humans for the weirwoods to subjugate, especially once many had been destroyed. Or perhaps the weirwoods saw war as a suitable means for controlling human population size? "My enemy has an enemy", as the Kimdissi would say.

We also know that weirwoods can't grow in the Eyrie, and that the grove on the Iron Islands is long dead. So presumably, those cultures were free to war as they liked, and the others had to defend themselves...

For the record, I am not suggesting a perfect parallel between the trees and the pyramids - only that the trees likely have some power over the COTF and possibly the FM (though no eye color change there), and that we definitely shouldn't trust them.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

While I'm not quite ready to name Planetos a Hrangan Slave Planet, I agree that the Proctor's visions are coming from these monuments, or perhaps, from the planet itself.

Agreed. I don't know that the H'rangans had anything to do with the creation of the weirwoods, and if they did, I doubt we will ever find out. It's simply a similar situation where a religious monument is controlling/manipulating its worshippers without their knowledge or consent.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Preach!

And I think this is GRRM's enduring stance on all religious leaders. They speak with an air of certainty they never truly possess. It reminds me of a certain segment of the fanbase.

LOL

LOL!

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Yes, it's quite the conundrum, especially when the "gods" do clearly have power. I would say, from what I've read so far, that there is no true divinity in play though, as time and time again we learn that what people see as gods are simply technology/magic they don't understand. The Tuf Voyaging series really drives this point home, as does the latest Euron chapter in TWOW (and of course, the story at hand!). Having power, even great, unexplainable power, does not make you a god. (Then again, if the worshipper can't tell the difference, does it matter? If praying to a "god" gets you results, you should keep praying, no? )

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Lol! Between this story, your miasma theory, and A Song for Lya, I am starting to seriously doubt the nature of the weirnet. Which of course would fit with the recruitment of BR and a young Euron, two characters who are morally ambiguous at best. And now Bran the broken, Bran who has committed many abominations already at age 9, and who is sitting in a cave full of bones, next to a corpse lord. Really GRRM has given us a whole slew of clues warning us about the weirwoods...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

I'm wondering if the pyramids themselves are not the power. I'm thinking they took on the shape of stone pyramids for the Jaenshi. Then, later, the power took on the shape of the Pale Child Bakkalon for the Steel Angels.

Remember, the bitter speaker did not know how the pyramids came to exist. Nor did she know stories of the gods the carvers made for trade, even once she was lucid. It seems to me that the power on the planet Corlos may instead reside within the plinths of translucent red glass (obsidian?). Upon these plinths, a totemic effigy is created that suits whatever race is intended to be enslaved.

I'm thinking the Jaenshi once revered pyramids just as the Steel Angels revere Bakkalon. The power manipulating each race took a while to get the image right for the latter. First, it offered large breasted fertility goddesses and Jaenshi/human-esque war gods.

It took some time to crack the code of the Steel Angels (the planet's new dominant race/predator), but once it did, it used the hack with increasing prowess.

Wow, yes!! I didn't catch that, but it fits perfectly. The statues made for neKroll were attempts at finding the right religion, the one that would work on the newcomers. They look like human gods b/c they ARE human gods.

Of course, this has extremely interesting implications for ASOIAF, if we choose to believe in such technology (or a strong magical being, or the essence of the planet). It may be trees that control the COTF, and it may be something entirely different for other races. Are glass candles really just a form of skyping, or is there more to them? I don't remember the name of the things they had in LOTR, but they were glass-type round objects that could be used to see things far away, maybe even the future- but the dark lord used them to show very specific visions to those who used them, causing them to despair and getting information from them in return...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

If weirwoods are truly their counterpart, it can only be because the manipulative power of Westeros knew that cotf (then later, First Men) would revere the trees.

If GRRM is using my love of trees against me, I'll never forgive him for it. LOL

Lol. It would certainly be an interesting twist, especially for an author known as a hippie.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Back to the obsidian-like plastic/glass... here are some references:

Frozen Fire?
"Interesting," she said finally, after studying the shard for several minutes. It was as hard and smooth as glass, but stronger; colored a translucent red, yet so very dark it was almost black. "A plastic?" she asked, throwing it back to the ground.
Obsidian Daggers?
Before full darkness had descended, a small pile of goods sat by his right hand; a matched set of redstone knives, a gray deathcloth woven from the fur of an elderly Jaenshi by his widow and friends (with his face wrought upon it in the silky golden hairs of a pseudomonk), a bone spear with tracings that reminded neKrol of the runes of Old Earth legend; and statues.
A Glass Candle?
Wyatt was twice as skeletal as she remembered him. He had been standing outdoors, near the foot of a huge platform-altar that had been erected in the middle of the city. A startlingly lifelike statue of Bakkalon, encased in a glass pyramid and set atop a high redstone plinth, threw a long shadow over the wooden altar. Beneath it, the squads of Angels were piling the newly-harvested neograss and wheat and the frozen carcasses of bushogs.

In other words, how do we know these idols even exist? I think they could be mere hallucinations of a manipulated mind, or holograms.

In any case, it seems they are customizable to meet the religious needs of future slaves. :devil

And we know the Jaenshi should not be able to create such a lifelike object, particularly one encased in "glass."

Another interesting idea! This actually seems much more likely than the object physically changing its shape and the material it seems to be made of.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Indeed. But.... Leaf was curious, and she even answers questions.

True, but perhaps she is an anomaly, different b/c her job is to help Bran feel at home? Like Angela in WW - a host who knows what the others don't, in order to interact with new guests. Or maybe the brainwashing of the COTF is not as complete as that of the Jaenshi; they are permitted some freedoms as long as they don't overpopulate and don't build or farm.

[At some point, we will need to discuss the Dothraki. While I don't find them particularly interesting on the surface, GRRM introduced them in Dany's first chapter and keeps returning to them. They annihilated many truly ancient Essosi civilizations virtually overnight. They destroy all human settlements in the Dothraki sea b/c they don't believe in harming the planet; they are against farming and building. They stay away from the woods, fearing the woods walkers, and they drag other cultures' gods with them to Vaes Dothrak. Lots here that is potentially relevant...]

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

It is certainly curious. And I can no longer dismiss the notion that Planetos is an interregnum planet. The Pale Child Bakkalon resides in the House of Black and White:

Yes, yes he does. Which confuses me to no end, as I was under the impression that GRRM had explicitly denied Planetos being in the 1000 Worlds universe. Bakkalon also isn't mentioned in the World Book, so how did his statue end up in the HOBAW? What culture on Planetos worships/worshipped him? As far as I know, it was only the Steel Angels in the 1000 Worlds who prayed to the Pale Child, no? So is GRRM suggesting they, at some point, were on Planetos? And if so, where did they go/what happened to them?

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

True. Though one might wonder why Westeros needs men at all.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Yes, there definitely seem to be some differences. Though in the show, when Bran is actively "praying" (watching through the weirnet), he also cannot communicate or sense the outside world (leading to the Hodor incident).

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Yes. Very cool shift in her persona there. One that we see in the Ghost of High Heart, Beric in his cave, and Theon in the Ghost of Winterfell chapter. The trees definitely manipulate some characters directly.

It may be that the Iron Born are right in the end, with their demonization of the blood-consuming trees.

Yes, I am very much leaning in this direction. The Grey King carved the first longship from the pale wood of Ygg, the demon tree that fed on human flesh. This brought about an age of prosperity and technological advancement for his people. Coincidence?

Also, speaking of the Ghost of High Heart ... why was she so afraid of Arya? Arya, who is being trained to see through lies and deception, so 'see with her eyes' rather than follow groupthink..

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

I think I remember this! I liked it then, and I like it even more now.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

And if the faces are carved... well that just brings to mind these simple Jaenshi wood-carvers. Tis a thin line between divine inspiration and mere manipulation by a higher form of sentience in GRRM's world. If the latter be true, the cotf and First Men were duped into carving the symbols that would enslave them. The more I think about it, this seems quite likely in GRRM's view of religion and war.

YES! It sure does. It reminds me of the movie Contact, where aliens send blueprints and humans blindly start building, without any idea of what it is they are creating.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

And yes, definitely agree that the power at work wanted the weapons master dead, and the rebels were merely tools to that end.

In fact, it might be that this was neKrol's misguided purpose all along -- to prepare the bitter speaker and her fellow rebels not to usurp the Steel Angels, but to kill any skeptics among them once the new idol was unveiled.

I sure wish we knew what his eyes looked like by the time he died... Though he was also a religious skeptic, so maybe the pyramids didn't control him or the rebels until the rebels were back in the clearing, near the pyramid.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

There is also a lot of star imagery around Daenerys, especially when she has dreams and visions. I think prestonjacobs did a whole video on it. Then there is the Starry Sept, and of course, Starfall...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Agreed. They seem to have been intended either for neKroll, or for the Steel Angels who did visit him occasionally.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

And then there are the old men who go hunting in the winter snows, never to return...

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

Wonderful post, Maester Sam! :cheers

Upon this reread the story completely changed for me, since I totally missed the twist the first time around. The Steel Angels did indeed become just one more "clan" praying to a slave master.

Thank you, ser!

I am glad you agree, this is an amazing story- it's one of my two or three favorites in the 1000 worlds universe.

Dec 27, 2016 23:01:53 GMT voice said:

This notion, that group-think is a false utopia is also found in A Song for Lya. I think the Greeshka in that story provide a better analogue for our children of the forest, but I must admit, you make a very well reasoned and compelling argument that has me shifting uncomfortably in my weirwood office chair.

Lol, as you should! I need to reread A Song for Lya. I remember the strong COTF parallels there, but I didn't feel much of a connection to the characters and I thought the end was somewhat predictable, which I found disappointing. But it's been years since I read it, and quickly b/c it was the last one I read, so I'll try to find the time and give it the attention it deserves.

There is another one, one of the Tuf Voyaging stories, where a peaceful hive-minded race creates demonic beasts to fight for them when humans threaten them unknowingly. That one may be worth a reread as well.

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 28, 2016 18:44:22 GMT

Quote

Post by voice on Dec 28, 2016 18:44:22 GMT

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

First- was the Pact a trick by the COTF? They lured the FM - who up until then had been destroying trees, which was the whole reason for the war- to the Isle of Faces, where every tree received a face. This is a mysterious place in a lake called the God's Eye; clearly a location with strong religious significance. All we know is that the wise men of both races met there, and by the time they left, the FM too were worshipping the trees. WTF?

Well, not exactly. While I have argued many a time that the FM did come to adopt the Old Gods following the Pact, and that this is evidence of FM/cotf alliance once the Andals invade, we do not know that this was an immediate and instant mass-conversion. All we know is that the Pact, like most treaties, made guarantees for either side of the conflict.

First Men agreed to no longer slash and burn weirwoods, but they were not required to worship them. While the possibility is there, I don't think we should conflate the two.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

Never mind the land division in favor of the FM, that was probably done so the rest of them would agree to the arrangement.

Never mind the other half of the Pact? Idk... seems significant to me.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

But remember that the COTF and FM were at war ONLY b/c the FM were destroying the weirwoods. And they were winning. Yet all of a sudden, they agreed that the trees must be prayed to and protected; they dropped whatever religion they may have had before (we don't even hear about any original FM religion!) to worship the trees. Something smells extremely fishy here, don't you think?

Perhaps. This is where my native upbringing might prejudice my opinions though. We injuns had been practicing ecological sustainability, and spiritualizing it, for thousands of years when the cross and robes showed up on our shores. They slashed and burned. They murdered and enslaved. They wanted land, and we wanted ecological sustainability.

Shocking, I know, but war ensued.

Once done, after many generations of demonizing and criminalizing our spiritual practices, wiser heads eventually prevailed. These wiser minds saw that we were not the cannibalistic charicatures that they had imagined, and actually took the time to learn and listen to what we had been saying all along.

The quotes are used on cheesy new-age memorabilia to this day:

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."

"As long as the grass shall grow and the rivers flow."

"In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

"When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

We did not begin saying these things in 1886. The newcomers simply could not listen so long as they feared our trees.

So to me, this acclimation to Westeros seems perfectly natural. The settlers were carrying with them unsustainable and oppressive dogma. It has taken a great while, but some finally see through it. The green/environmentalist/ecological awareness movement we know today is but the modern incarnation of this generational interaction. Al Gore was not the first white man to voice an inconvenient truth to his fellows. :cool

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

Then, as PJ mentioned, there is the issue of technological regression. We are told the FM didn't build round towers, but ancient round towers are found in FM castles like Winterfell. We are told they only used bronze, yet we have accounts of the Last Hero using "dragonsteel". And so on. There are entire threads dedicated to this topic. It is often assumed that some catastrophe caused the regression - but what if that wasn't it? What if, every time a new civilization landed on Westeros and started building their various structures, they sooner or later met the COTF and were converted to their religion? After that, like the Steel Angels, they lost interest in technology and progress; they forgot how to build such things and forgot that they ever knew how to do it. Instead of bringing a pyramid into their city, they planted a weirwood in their castle.

While I can see the interregnum angle a bit, I think it's backwards to assume First Men planted weirwoods in their castles.

I agree with Catelyn very rarely, but one thing that I do admire about her is her account of Winterfell. It is a passage most here know well, but I never tire of it:

At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. "The heart tree," Ned called it. The weirwood's bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea.

Now I have a volumes of pet theories that relate to Winterfell's Godswood, but setting those aside, I take Cat at her word on this... or perhaps more accurately... the tales of Brandon the Builder, and his setting of the first stone under the watchful eyes of "the heart tree."

Rather than plant trees in their castles, the First Men planted castles around heart trees.

To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn't even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.

When people neglect their heart, it gets sick and dies. This is what we see at the Eyrie, and Casterly Rock... houses that have neglected their hearts.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

Like the Jaenshi, the COTF don't build, they don't farm, and they don't fight except to protect their religious structures. The FM are not quite as perfectly Jaenshi, but from an ecological standpoint they do seem well adjusted. We don't hear of them expanding their cities, building new castles, etc. Their population size seems stable. In fact, "extra" men are sent to the Wall where they are kept busy with meaningless tasks and will not reproduce. They don't take part in wars, either. Hmmm.

What?

We hear of many expanding their cities (Greyjoy's rebellion), building new castles (Harrenhal), and rather than remain stable, we've seen populations explode (King's Landing).

And rather than have surplus men, the Night's Watch is starved for reinforcements. We hear this from Ned:

Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice. "For the joy of my company, surely," he said lightly. "And there is the Wall. You need to see it, Your Grace, to walk along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The Night's Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen says—"

And we hear this from Mormont:

"You can," Mormont said bluntly. "Your sister sits beside the king. Your brother is a great knight, and your father the most powerful lord in the Seven Kingdoms. Speak to them for us. Tell them of our need here. You have seen for yourself, my lord. The Night's Watch is dying. Our strength is less than a thousand now. Six hundred here, two hundred in the Shadow Tower, even fewer at Eastwatch, and a scant third of those fighting men. The Wall is a hundred leagues long. Think on that. Should an attack come, I have three men to defend each mile of wall."

And rather than practice population control, we have multiple tales of black brothers siring bastards and visiting Mole's Town.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

But there is another race that may have been "simplified" by the weirwoods- and that is the race of the giants.
The giants? But they are just big hairy animals! Well yes, today. But that wasn't always so; we have legends of giants having castles and kidnapping people - so clearly, they were not always as primitive as they are now. Food for thought...

We also have tales of them eating people, but we know now that Giants are vegans.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

Lastly, and this is not a theory that's well developed yet, but still... If, after the Pact, the FM were divided into the True Believers and the, um, others, this would not only provide a reason for a future conflict - the others wanting to take back the world for non-brainwashed people, by any means necessary - but also would offer a reason for why the faction that our 'good guys' (ancestors of today's remaining FM families) fought during the LN became known as the Others. It's simply not a term one would normally use for a race of non-humans, IMO. It is used to describe humans that are not part of the group, not part of the tree worshippers.

Yet the author describes them as inhuman... and as another form of life... one that is made of ice.

The Others are not dead. They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous.

Each of these qualities would seem to directly contradict the argument that they are merely displaced humans that have resisted conversion.

If anything, it seems the Others have embraced a brand of conversion far more alien than most First Men.

Dec 28, 2016 15:07:44 GMT Maester Sam said:

These Others, not brainwashed like the rest, retained the ancient technologies. They have stealth armor and vastly superior weapons. They may or may not have engineered themselves to survive in the cold wastes; otherwise they found some other way to live there (magic does seem to be "real" in this world so I won't rule out that explanation- they simply had gifts that allowed them to adapt to the Lands of Always Winter). They live in the far North b/c it's one of the few places in Westeros where weirwoods don't grow...

If they are merely humans who have retained more advanced tech, how do you explain them melting like ice cubes from contact with obsidian?

Last Edit: Dec 28, 2016 19:04:16 GMT by voice: dornish keyboard

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 28, 2016 23:34:52 GMT voice and sagenadia like this

Quote

Post by Maester Sam on Dec 28, 2016 23:34:52 GMT

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

Well, not exactly. While I have argued many a time that the FM did come to adopt the Old Gods following the Pact, and that this is evidence of FM/cotf alliance once the Andals invade, we do not know that this was an immediate and instant mass-conversion. All we know is that the Pact, like most treaties, made guarantees for either side of the conflict.

First Men agreed to no longer slash and burn weirwoods, but they were not required to worship them. While the possibility is there, I don't think we should conflate the two.

True, agreed. But IF we were to assume that the trees work a little like the pyramids do, then having all FM leaders gather on an island full of trees with faces is a lot like sending the bakkalon-pyramid back to the city of the Steel Angels. In other words, it wouldn't have been necessary to officially require that humans worship the trees; by exposing all their leaders to many trees over a span of possibly multiple days, they would have been corrupted and would have returned to their bannermen preaching a new religion.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

Never mind the other half of the Pact? Idk... seems significant to me.

Lol, sure. But one could look at it from the viewpoint that the COTF, controlled by the trees, were now willing to give up most of their land to the FM, as long as they shared their "religion". Anything to get the FM leaders near the trees, and the trees would do the rest.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

Expand

We did not begin saying these things in 1886. The newcomers simply could not listen so long as they feared our trees.

So to me, this acclimation to Westeros seems perfectly natural. The settlers were carrying with them unsustainable and oppressive dogma. It has taken a great while, but some finally see through it. The green/environmentalist/ecological awareness movement we know today is but the modern incarnation of this generational interaction. Al Gore was not the first white man to voice an inconvenient truth to his fellows. :cool

While I don't really disagree with any of this, I would point out that the Al Gores of the world are still very much in the minority. Overall, humanity is still destroying the planet at an alarming rate, and while some (mostly the Europeans) have begun to realize that this cannot continue, most others are barely aware of the irreversible damage that's being done (or they simply don't care). I think humanity as a whole is a long, long way away from living sustainably.
If only we had some Others to alert us to the problem!

As for you Natives... it is true that your ancestors lived much more sustainably than almost all humans today.. but didn't they also worship trees/nature? In my theory, the two go together.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

Expand

Agreed, and I stand corrected. The castles went up around the trees, not the other way around. I was thinking of the unsuccessful attempt to plant a weirwood in the Eyrie, but you're right, Winterfell's heart tree (and probably most others) was there before the castle.
I'm not sure to what extent this harms my theory. Maybe knowledge was lost over time, not immediately? I assume the Steel Angels still know how to use their technology, for now, so they may yet fortify their city further before this knowledge is lost. Resulting in an advanced city around a pyramid, so that could still fit.

Something else occurred to me. You had mentioned earlier how the Jaenshi probably worshipped pyramids before they were brainwashed, and so the "god" took on the appearance of a pyramid. What if the COTF/FM initially worshipped faceless weirwoods, and built their castles around them - and at some later point in time the trees started to control them? Bran seems to witness the "awakening" of Winterfell's heart tree, which coincided with the blood sacrifice performed there. But the tree must have already been present before this, otherwise there would have been no tree to sacrifice in front of. So wouldn't this suggest that these men were worshipping the tree before it was "awake"?

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

What?

We hear of many expanding their cities (Greyjoy's rebellion), building new castles (Harrenhal), and rather than remain stable, we've seen populations explode (King's Landing).

Ah, but none of these are FM with weirwoods. The ironborn are unique among the FM in that they worship the Drowned God instead of weirwoods; thus, they would not be subject to population control. They, in fact, remind me of the Steel Angels before they were converted. And King's Landing was built by Targaryens and has mostly Andals living in it.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

And rather than have surplus men, the Night's Watch is starved for reinforcements.

Now. But that wasn't always the case; many castles were only recently abandoned- after the Andals and the Dragons came, neither of who respect or worship/obey the weirwoods. The Watch, for many millennia, removed thousands of men from the Westerosi population and made them swear an oath not to reproduce.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

And rather than practice population control, we have multiple tales of black brothers siring bastards and visiting Mole's Town.

Sure, some of them father bastards - but not to the extent that they would if they erected their own holdfast and started a family. I would assume that most NW brothers don't have children. They swear an oath not to. And I also assume that the Moles Town whores are familiar with moon tea.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

We also have tales of them eating people, but we know now that Giants are vegans.

Exactly! In legends of old they were predators, now they are harmless vegans. Imagine the legends told of the Steel Angels a thousand years in the future: they were a warlike people, hanging innocent children from the city walls. Now they are a peaceful tribe, probably also vegetarian except when it's time to cull the excess bushogs. Are the legends wrong, or have the people changed?

ETA: If the giants were always harmless vegans... why was there conflict with the COTF?

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

Yet the author describes them as inhuman... and as another form of life... one that is made of ice.

The Others are not dead. They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous.

Each of these qualities would seem to directly contradict the argument that they are merely displaced humans that have resisted conversion.

If anything, it seems the Others have embraced a brand of conversion far more alien than most First Men.

Hmm yes. They certainly are not normal humans - now. But what if they were, in the beginning? GRRM obviously wouldn't give that away, and they may well have diverged to a point that they are now a different life form.
But I agree that this part at least of the theory was a bit ambitious; I think the Ice Dragon inspired me to view Others as humans claimed by winter who then choose to travel north and become Others, whatever that entails specifically. But it's true that there is very little evidence of this in the text, with the possible exception of the Craster situation.

Dec 28, 2016 20:14:06 GMT voice said:

If they are merely humans who have retained more advanced tech, how do you explain them melting like ice cubes from contact with obsidian?

I wouldn't say "merely" humans; clearly their physiology is not that of the average person. But it wouldn't surprise me if, for example, Melisandre can't die a natural death. If she were to be stabbed by an Other blade, for example - would she burn up? I think she very well might. But that doesn't mean she didn't start out human. Beric's blood literally burns, but he started out human too. So we do have precedent for humans changing into something a little different, given the right circumstances.

Last Edit: Dec 29, 2016 0:51:38 GMT by Maester Sam

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Dec 30, 2016 5:50:45 GMT sagenadia likes this

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Post by voice on Dec 30, 2016 5:50:45 GMT

First, gotta say, I'm loving this discussion. Everyone should read GRRM's 1000 Worlds series. If I were teaching a class of ice and fire, it would be a prerequisite. I have a feeling you feel the same way.

There are simply too many parallels and repeated themes/arcs to dismiss. GRRM has, in my opinion, been telling this story since 1973. I speak of the first part (imo) of the 1000 Worlds Series, and the story titled With Morning Comes Mistfall. prestonjacobs missed a few stories in his bookclub project that are very clearly a part of the 1000 Worlds, and this one appears to be the first.

Another story in the 1000 Worlds PJ missed was the Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr. In it, we learn far more the nature of The Seven, and character of the Pale Child Bakkalon.

But let me clean my glasses and return to our current discussion.

lol

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Hahaha, that explains it! It's not normally an ending one would forget, lol.

I feel really dumb for missing it. LOL

I was flying through them the first time around. But I am ashamed to admit I listened to the audiobook of this one at least twice, and still missed the point. :bag

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Yeah, those eyes really give it away. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the Others are themselves being controlled, with their blue eyes and all...

A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will.

[Yes folks, GRRM has some some serious unresolved issues with women from his past. Ten bucks says the first black magic woman to break his heart had eyes of blue. LOL]

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Ok... sorry to be this jaded... but I'm wondering if it isn't the nature of GRRM's Gods and GRRM's Men to destroy one another.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

It's too bad the timelines don't quite fit for this in ASOIAF, with the Pact occurring before the LN.

And this road not taken, imo, makes all the difference.

This is why I've disagreed with you, wolfmaid7 , BC, and SlyWren for so many years regarding the cotf-antagonists angle.

GRRM has already told that version of the story, and even when almost 'going there', he doesn't. Rather than have alien/humanoid races lead man astray, GRRM instead has always had men be their own worst enemy. (The Jungian-Other, and my interp of Weirwood Antibodies)

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Oh, something else about that line. arrysfleas has a cool theory that the Drowned God of the ironborn is in fact a greenseer in a flooded cave beneath the weirwood grove that is now Nagga's ribs. Beneath the snow the god lies broken. Beneath the waves the drowned god sits in his watery halls. Not that much of a stretch, is it? What if the Grey King was the one to flood the cave, and in doing so, freed the ironborn from the demon tree's rule? We know he brought enlightenment (fire, longships) to the ironborn, which would fit with a newfound freedom of the mind...

Makes a lot of sense. But then, would not the Iron Born be worshipping a drowned Old God, rather than their own original god? (Which still, makes a lot of sense to me)

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I agree, the deathcloths seem to be genuine Jaenshi works, likely left over from before the pyramids. I suppose there was no reason for the pyramids to stop this tradition?

That's what I was thinking as well. What would the hive mind have to fear from such shrouds?

But now, I'm wondering if instead the tradition was simply too strong/inherent to break with mind control. The bitter speaker and her companions seem to have made one for our protagonist even after they became disillusioned, and even though they had no religious understanding/teachings they could recall.

Interesting.

Might be something to this, and our direwolf pups (one of which sure seems like a deathcloth in its own right).

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Yup. While horrific enough, this is one of those cases in which truth is far stranger than fiction. Hanging babies from walls to starve is downright gentle compared to some of the historical atrocities committed by people in the name of god, right here in the United States.

GRRM is extremely cognizant of this history, and when confronted by a fan or interviewer on the topic of depravity, he has oft cited accurate examples that are even more disturbing than his own. Like current events we find disturbing, there exists a vasts ocean of history that is ignored. People prefer pleasant stories in which they are righteous to those that make them question the humanity of their traditions.

Some of GRRM's stories are quite directly translated from that forgotten ocean, and I think this is one reason his views on religion are so sober and direct in their criticism.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Which again makes it unlikely, IMO, that in the end, the Old Gods will be the solution somehow, or that they alone are "true" gods. Their intention may be to maintain a stable ecology in Westeros, but humans by their very nature don't fit into such an ecosystem - not unless they are carefully controlled.

Just when I think I'm being overly depressing in my analysis, you go and lower the bar! LOL

I think GRRM admires the higher mysteries, and I think there is much to be said for those who question that which they admire. Our own examinations of ice and fire can be seen as being much the same.

We admire it, but we examine it very critically.

I think GRRM does this with both science and religion, and that he finds his middle ground in the realm of nature and psychology.

He gave us the Proctor. He gave us Cersei.

But he also gave us Jon and Brienne.

Every Mountain that Rides must eventually slip beneath the Davos Seaworth.

So, just as hubris and ambition can be cancerous, so too can humanity heal. In ASTNKM, the Steel Angels are doomed, but the Lights of Jolostar is able to perceive and understand that doom for what it is.

GRRM is no optimist, but he does give us some room for hope... Or at least, he gives us enough information to hope that someone will make a wiser choice to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Others might (and will) repeat them, and so, history moves in circles...as it always has.

We see such turns/epiphanies all over Ice and Fire -- Tyrion, Theon, Sansa -- and I think, in ASTNKM, we see this in the bitter speaker, in neKrol, and in Ryther herself.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Well in this scenario, Tyrion would be a Hill, rather than a Lannister. But yes. Agreed.

Re: the banshee... there are others. One in The Plague Star rescues our protagonist, ~~Varys~~ Havilund Tuf, and a very similar creature in Bitterblooms leads our proto-Lyanna into a web of lies.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

And if said dragon was then used to destroy the rest of Tywin's family...

Why... then Tyrion would finally be Lord of Casterly Rock. :cheers

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Winter kills only the weak, and those without the means of making fire.

The Others are a weirwood's antibodies against the antigen of Man a-horse, wielding flame and sword.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Yes... but only b/c some pyramids are still around. I imagine if ALL pyramids were destroyed, the spell would break and all subjugated races would be free.

Mayhaps. I'm less certain. I think the plinths are the source of the mind-fuck. And if one were to completely strip such a resource from a mystical planet, it would cease to be mystical.

Rather than be like the Citadel, and seek to remove magic from the world, I much preferred neKrol's original modus operandi. He made peace with the locals, sat at their seance, yet retained his identity and sense of self.

There is much to be said for keeping a respectful distance from arcane powers, rather than seeking to destroy that which we do not understand.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Well, the Giants were their bane and their brothers. Maybe they were their bane first, and their brothers after they started praying to the trees?

Mmm, sounds too selective to me. Leaf does not describe it as a before and after, but as a symbiosis. In fact, she does this to illustrate the difference between such dichotomies and the realms of men. Men consume the realm until they are all that remain in it.

(Although I would add the caveat that such a description better suits those that arrived after the Pact, and after the Long Night, rather than the First Men... who did find a sustainable niche prior to the arrival of latter groups.)

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I don't know that the weirnet truly creates pacifists. Like the pyramids, I imagine the goal is a balanced ecosystem, and the end justifies the means. To get there, violence is needed.

On the bold, I disagree. And in truth, I think this speaks to the core of GRRM's recurring four-decade parable.

When violent Men are confronted with the mystery of Peace, they assume nefarious forces are at work and that violence is needed, but violence only begets more violence.

In my experience, peace is not at all a difficult state to reach. It is only made difficult by violence. When we live and let live, it is easy to live. It takes far more work to hammer swords and train to kill with them. I find it is more enjoyable in life, and rewarding, to laugh with friends and make love with lovers than it is to mock a foe or throw a fist.

To put it in Newtonian terms (which I tend to do), peace is like inertia. It sustains itself. It requires effort (Force) to alter that peace.

A body at peace can indeed remain at peace. It does not require violence to get there. And in contrast, a peaceful body, acted upon in a violent way, becomes a violent contagion. And thus, the miasma spreads.

A fire needs fuel, but wood is just fine staying wood.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

The pyramid caused the rebel Jaenshi to kill the Steel Angel weapons master, and this led to a massacre of many Jaenshi. The Steel Angels also were forced to kill their own children, and most of the adults will starve in the coming winter. Similarly, wars between believers and nonbelievers would have been "necessary" in Westeros as well.

I also wonder if there weren't simply too many humans for the weirwoods to subjugate, especially once many had been destroyed. Or perhaps the weirwoods saw war as a suitable means for controlling human population size? "My enemy has an enemy", as the Kimdissi would say.

We also know that weirwoods can't grow in the Eyrie, and that the grove on the Iron Islands is long dead. So presumably, those cultures were free to war as they liked, and the others had to defend themselves...

For the record, I am not suggesting a perfect parallel between the trees and the pyramids - only that the trees likely have some power over the COTF and possibly the FM (though no eye color change there), and that we definitely shouldn't trust them.

Power over?

I'm less certain a hierarchy exists in this case.

They are just trees, after all. And there are no weirwoods in Essos, yet there are plenty of cults and violent peoples upon that continent.

At least in Westeros, we have tales of sustainable coexistence (bane-brothers, LOL). In Essos, we have no such tales.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

All true. I quite agree.

The difference, imo, is that we have no discussion of magic from Leaf. Nor even from Bloodraven.

Their understandings seem to be influenced instead by attributes that are inherited through good old fashioned sex. Rather than be conjured from burning witches, leeches, and penises, they are inherited from Blood/DNA. In this way, I view the green-powers as being as natural as Jon Snow.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

LOL, ditto!

But rather than view the weirnet as the cause of man's problems, I think the weirnet is simply Westeros' symbiotic relationships. In attacking them, man produced an equal and opposite reaction. Given that even trees in Westeros inherit consciousness, I interpret the continent as being "alive." When foreign bodies attack a living host, an immune systems response is triggered. Some responses are more complicated than others, and some take far more time than others. But in the case of the Others, they seem quite perfect. Elegant, even.

So rather than see a whole slew of clues that warn us about the weirwoods, I think GRRM has given us a whole slew of causes for heart attacks. It just so happens that in Westeros, the hearts are trees.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

In Westeros, I think man is repeatedly forging and reforging things that imitate power. Swords, dragonglass daggers, nightfires, statues of the Seven, paintings of laughing trees...

But always, they are but the cheap knock-off of power which men have made. What is unique about the Others, to me, is that they are not. Rather than be man-made imitations of power, I think they are the real power's imitation of Men.

To me, they represent the implacability those trees felt. And yes, we know those trees can feel...and see...and even taste. Bloodraven tells us that

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

It matters not, to a tree, how long ago the Others came for the first time. To the weirwoods, it is but a moment.

They understand "Sun and soil and water." So if a man made of soil uses fire and bronze and stone against such a thing...and that thing is sentient...and timeless...

Then I think, in Westeros, you are going to get those things used against you, in a way a tree would understand.

The First Men were horrorstruck when they first encountered the faces in the trees. In their hubris, they gave them to fire and sword.

But a moment later, in tree-time anyway, the Others come and turn that hubris back into horror with weaponized cold and swords of ice.

Can that be mere happenstance?

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Another interesting idea! This actually seems much more likely than the object physically changing its shape and the material it seems to be made of.

And therein lies the danger of religion in GRRM's worlds. It's the Sealord's Cat. It's Varys' riddle.

Confirmation bias, combined with religious ecstasy, is a damned scary thing. LOL

Who knows what those pyramids looked like to the Jaenshi. :devil

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

None of the Jaenshi attempted to make neKrol feel at home. I think this is another example that demonstrates that man will prove to be the antagonist, rather than weirwoods or the cotf.

Even in ASTNKM, I think this argument holds. The Jaenshi did not fool neKrol, nor did they ever trick the Steel Angels. The power of the eventual trick came in the abilities of humans to lie to themselves, to be sheep, and, to attack that which they did not understand.

If they had not upset the balance, they might have found a place within it. The weapons master was ready for that balance, as was neKrol.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

[At some point, we will need to discuss the Dothraki. While I don't find them particularly interesting on the surface, GRRM introduced them in Dany's first chapter and keeps returning to them. They annihilated many truly ancient Essosi civilizations virtually overnight. They destroy all human settlements in the Dothraki sea b/c they don't believe in harming the planet; they are against farming and building. They stay away from the woods, fearing the woods walkers, and they drag other cultures' gods with them to Vaes Dothrak. Lots here that is potentially relevant...]

[We will need to, won't we. I suggest we do so in the Dying of the Light discussion, as I think that book gives us our first glimpse of the Dothraki. I might also add that I find the Dothraki VERY INTERESTING, but only because I find the First Men interesting... and I think the Dothraki are what First Men were, prior to coming to Westeros. See each culture's affinity for bronze, curved blades, and bloodletting.]

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I'm not sure if he denied asoiaf was a part of the 1000 worlds, so much as he shied away from it. If I recall correctly, he mentioned that it would be interesting if that ended up being the case, and that he might attempt to bridge that gap some future day, but that for the moment, they were seperate works.

What he did refute, quite directly, was that asoiaf's seasons and manifestations can be explained by science. He said it was instead magic at work on Planetos.

...but even that carries a standing caveat...

Since, he has also equated magic and tech in many interviews, describing the former as a simple ignorance of the latter.

And, Bitterblooms drives this lesson home, while being surrounded by blue roses.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

True. Though one might wonder why Westeros needs men at all.

Indeed. But wight-men are not like normal men. Without fire or iron to make them rise to fight, they are but frozen meat beneath the snow.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Definitely. But the show is a far less nuanced beast than the books. In the books, GRRM seems to attempt to consider every possible example and counter-example, and give us manifestations of each (like Coldhands, and the fragment of Orell that lived on in V6's eagle). It's pretty brilliant.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I am hesitant to lean in the direction of the Ironborn. And not because of Euron.

I think that if they ended up being right, then that would validate their Drowned God. Thus, their perspective too must be flawed.

[And, in keeping with our bracketed Dothraki discussion, I think they represent the flipside of the Dothraki. They fear the land (and trees) as much as the Dothraki fear the poisoned water (and boats). The two are equally ignorant and barbaric, merely in contrasting ways (which seem to compliment one another).]

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

YES! It sure does. It reminds me of the movie Contact, where aliens send blueprints and humans blindly start building, without any idea of what it is they are creating.

Very cool movie! Yes, exactly like that. :cheers

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I have a feeling his eyes were still their normal color, if we're talking about the weapons master. If we're talking about neKrol, I think his eyes likely remained the same as well. Each seemed lucid to the end.

While neKrol's death was much like Gared's description of freezing to death...

"I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like."

... I didn't get the impression that neKrol ever succumbed to the seductions of the pyramid. Now, it might be that if the pyramids are indeed like weirwoods, then in death, it makes no matter. V6 wasn't exactly a spiritual man, but in death, he found some perspective.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Oh yes, and SlyWren has puzzled out some interesting interpretations from this that relate to markg171 's (f)Dany essay, and the idea that Dany might actually be the daughter of the starry Ashara Dayne.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

And then there are the old men who go hunting in the winter snows, never to return...

That's right! How could I forget them! Precisely the same sort of thing.

Could the logic behind the killing of Robert's bastards was cut from this same cloth? Might be too much of a stretch there, eh?

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Thank you, ser!

I am glad you agree, this is an amazing story- it's one of my two or three favorites in the 1000 worlds universe.

For pure entertainment value, it's hard to beat Tuf Voyaging. I found myself laughing quite a bit reading those. In terms of plot, this is definitely a great one. Laren Dorr has greater emotional depth, as does Dying of the Light imo, but this one has a superior ending compared to those two.

I really like the atmosphere and tone of Bitterblooms (as well as the audiobook narrator's voice). Oh, and the best opening line of any of them has to be: When Jesus of Nazareth hung dying on his cross, the volcryn passed within a year of his agony, headed outward." (from Nightflyers). Nightflyers was pretty cool, and I think that one tells us much and more about Brynden Rivers.

But really, they're all good. The only one that felt "meh" to me was Starlady.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I'm a-squirming, Maester Sam . I've long feared my trust of the cotf and the trees was misplaced. But we all have to have our lines in the sand.

:commie

LOL

If you read A Song for Lya as if the main characters are Jon Snow's parents, Ned's "wolf-blood" sentiments make a lot of sense.

The story is about "Lyanna" and the man she loved, after all.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

There is another one, one of the Tuf Voyaging stories, where a peaceful hive-minded race creates demonic beasts to fight for them when humans threaten them unknowingly. That one may be worth a reread as well.

It's one of my favorites because I think it proves my miasma theory. LOL

I should probably break up the Tuf Voyaging thread into a thread for each of Tuf's stories. Guardians is the third one (published 1981), and is read by Roy Dotrice.

The race was not hive-minded though, but telepathic, and people were eating them like oysters.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Ah yes, now I getcha. Great point.

While I'm open to the possibility of this being the case, I don't think it fits very well with the events that led up to the Age of Heroes.

The conversion was not instant. In fact, we have tales of cotf/FM skirmishes even after the Pact was forged.

I'm thinking that the wiser men of both races agreed to the Isle as a meeting place after some of the conversion of FM had already begun. None of this negates your angle, but I think the mind-control we see in this story is precisely that. It controls every aspect of the lives of it's slaves. In asoiaf, weirwood influences seem far less widespread, far more subtle, and far more selective.

Rather than inhabit the minds of everyone in proximity, a weirwood must be wed by one with the gift. And one with the gift is incredibly rare.

"Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger," Lord Brynden said one day, after Bran had learned to fly, "and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer."

That provides us with some easy math.

Skinchanger:Population
1:1000

= 0.1% of men are skinchangers.

Greenseer:Skinchanger-Population
1:1000

= 0.1% of skinchangers are greenseers.

Thus, if we apply these porportions to how many men can be greenseers, we get:

Greenseer:Population
1:1,000,000

= 0.0001 % of men are greenseers.

That's one ten-thousanth of one percent of the population who are greenseers.

[side note: this ratio may mean that the population of Westeros is between 1 and 2 million people, as it currently yields between 1 and 2 greenseers]

So why did I do all this math? In ASTNKM, every clan has its "Talker" and every clan numbers 20-30, half of which are adults and half of which are children. Even if we include the children, that means 3.33% to 5% of Jaenshi are Talkers. That is a far more potent ratio of influence than we see in asoiaf, except....

We have a GINORMOUS concentration of this influence in the current generation of youngsters from Winterfell. 6/6 are wargs, to varying degrees. Of the six, at least one is a bona fide greenseer. That's pretty damned impressive.

Considering only two Starks in the previous generation were even said to have "wolf-blood" then that certainy seems to suggest something occurred in the current generation to increase this concentration.

It seems as though 100% of the Kings of Winter were also wargs, unless people were lying when scuplting all those dead Starks. I don't think they were... at least, not until 200 years ago.

So, crackpot alert, I'm thinking Starks once had a far greater concentration of this influence than other First Men families. I have a hunch that thier Godswood was always and ever inhabited by a Stark Greenseer. And I think that this is what the "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell" mantra is all about.

To crack the pot further, I think Lyanna was the last Stark with the gift in her blood, and that it was incredibly strong. (See A Song for Lya)

I don't think she lived long enough to take root beneath WF's godswood, but I do think she was able to send the kids those direwolf pups. (I believe the dead mother wolf was hers, in spirit, if not in life.)

And, just to make sure this pot is thoroughly broken, I believe it is Lyanna who is beckoning Jon deeper and deeper into crypts in his dreams...

Not the weirnet. Not the Others. Not the cotf. It's his mom.

I have offered the alternative crackpot before that Lyanna is, like Bloodraven, residing in the roots of WF's heart tree... but I don't want to see her like that. So I've whittled this crackpot down to the essentials: Lyanna's consciousness is in WF's heart tree, along with all those buried in WF's ~~sidhe cave/cotf hollow~~ crypts.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

One could indeed. Another great point. I can't disprove it. But I do think that it is notable that there are no Others shaped like cotf or giants.

Yet, we know that cotf and giants always fought. Even though they always fought, they required no Pact to end the fighting.

And, no trees were burned.

I think we agree that the main purpose of the Pact is to protect the ~~Truffula trees~~ weirwoods. All that we seem to disagree on is whether or not the First Men came to make this accord of their own impetus, or that of the trees' own (pyramid-like) influence.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Al Gores are a minority, I agree.

But I don't think they are as rare as wargs.

Unfortunately, for us in the real world, the top 2% control (let's be honest) 100% of the world's resources.

That means they have a disporportionate effect on policy and practice when it comes to modern cultural ecology.

Their influence also tends to drown out the message of the many Al Gores, but I do think there are far more of them than is realized.

It is the nature of humanity to be sustainable, in my opinion. Rare are the men and women who pollute their homes to the state they are becoming sick. It is, in my opinion, a forced cultural apparatus that coerces individuals into practices that do not handicap individuals in sustainable societies.

The entire world had sustainability figured out a very long time ago. It was forgotten only recently, by parts of it.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

If only we had some Others to alert us to the problem!

The greenseers are trying... but some people have a hard time realizing winter is coming until the ice winds come howling out of the north.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

As for you Natives... it is true that your ancestors lived much more sustainably than almost all humans today.. but didn't they also worship trees/nature? In my theory, the two go together.

LOL we didn't worship trees (that's Christians, who kneel before a wooden cross). And no, we didn't worship nature either (that's science). Rather, we understand that the world balances itself. And we revere and humbly acknowledge that balance. We have songs about it. We have dances commemorating it. We have elaborate rituals to identify it and educate our children about it.

Rather than be so egocentric to believe that worshipping trees/nature has any effect upon the balance, we understand that our (secular) actions have consequences in this world that affect everyone. We can influence such consequences in ways we like, and unfortunately, we can influence them in ways we do not.

All that is different between sustainable and non-sustainable cultures is in understanding consequences. Many dominant societies today do not believe, in their religions, that this world is heaven. In sustainable cultures, it's not even a question.

We reap what we sow. We can choose to reap things that we like: clean air/water/land, healthy bodies, social freedoms... and sow appropriately. Or, we can choose to reap the opposite, and sow those seeds instead.

Many people today are sowing seeds that will net them an iPhone and a strong network, rather than a pineapple and a strong people. Each path entails its own responsibilities and consequences, affecting future generations. Neither is good, neither is bad. But, one will create a demand for underage labor and the refining of synthetic minerals, and the other will create a demand for clean air, water, and soil.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Doesn't harm your theory at all. Your points all still stand. Was only pointing that out because the reverse harms my pet theories. LOL

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

Something else occurred to me. You had mentioned earlier how the Jaenshi probably worshipped pyramids before they were brainwashed, and so the "god" took on the appearance of a pyramid. What if the COTF/FM initially worshipped faceless weirwoods, and built their castles around them - and at some later point in time the trees started to control them? Bran seems to witness the "awakening" of Winterfell's heart tree, which coincided with the blood sacrifice performed there. But the tree must have already been present before this, otherwise there would have been no tree to sacrifice in front of. So wouldn't this suggest that these men were worshipping the tree before it was "awake"?

Mayhaps. I've never believed that Bran witnessed the awakening of WF's heart tree.

The tree never slept. Bran was the one that needed awakening, as did/does humanity.

Rather than worship a tree, I would (again, apologies for my native bias) argue that those First Men gathered around a tree they acknowledged had a mysterious power. And, that such a place was a good place for what they needed to do.

And I am far from certain the man was sacrificed.

We are introduced to the Stark family as Bran rides out to see a man beheaded. Gared was not some barbaric human sacrifice. He was brave (according to Robb), and he was already dead of fear (according to Jon). According to the Neddard, he was both, and in fact, Gared could only have been brave if he was afraid.

Those are some heavy truths to weigh and consider.

I'm thinking Winterfell's godswood would be the perfect place to do such things, and I think that is what took place in that Weir-paste flashback.

And yes, the tree was already present, and already quite observant. Else, Bran would not have been able to witness the events that led up to the man's execution.

The trees were always awake. To them the acorn is the oak and the oak is the acorn. Thus there is no difference between a mature weirwood and the seed of one, or even the stump of one. All simply are.

I think Qhorin's statement that "The trees have eyes again" does not suggest that the trees are only recently able to see again, nor that they have only recently received their faces. We know that neither of those are the case. Rather, I think this statement is far more ominous, more akin to 'winter is coming'. But that is another topic.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

The Lannisters are First Men, with weirwoods. Yet they are extremely numerous, irreverant, and...

The Lannister appetite for offices and honors seemed to know no bounds.
-Ned

"There is no limit to Lannister pride or Lannister ambition"
-Catelyn

By now Stark was no doubt regretting his chivalrous impulse. Perhaps he had learned a lesson. The Lannisters never declined, graciously or otherwise. The Lannisters took what was offered.
-Tyrion

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

All true. And I argue the decline began only 200 years ago.

But still, the Night's Watch brothers that remain seem to be under any influence other than that of weirwoods.

I mean, they just kinda assasinated the guy with a weirwood direwolf.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

All true. But then, what is to explain the men who erect holdfasts and start families in the proximity of weirwoods? The wildlings live in areas with a far greater concentration of weirwoods, yet breed like rabbits.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I suppose the giants could have become vegans, but see no reason to make this assumption. Biological needs must be met. If they were once carnivorous or omnivorous, and veganism has been forced upon them by the trees, where is the giants' quarterly bushog harvest?

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

ETA: If the giants were always harmless vegans... why was there conflict with the COTF?

Ah, well I have a theory as to that.

The giants eat plants and the weirwoods are cellulose fiber.

In order to combat those who might eat them, the trees produced consciousness-expanding fruits that lured the squirrel people. The squirrel people grind the fruits into paste, and glimpse the needs of the ecology. The squirrel people in turn antagonize the giants.

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

If they were once human, and chose to forego that humanity in order to preserve their Essossian religion... it seems they made a terrible choice.

From what we know of them, their culture mocks and butchers the weak. Oh, and they raise the corpses of the slain to strangle the corpse's brothers.

If that is the tradition they made sacrifices to protect, I think the First Men made the more human choice. :cool

Dec 29, 2016 14:05:48 GMT Maester Sam said:

I agree, but Beric and Mel are perfect examples of people who let their religion strip them of their natural/sustainable humanity. I mean, just look at Mel's kids!

Last Edit: Dec 30, 2016 5:51:26 GMT by voice

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Jan 2, 2017 19:49:21 GMT voice likes this

Quote

Post by Maester Sam on Jan 2, 2017 19:49:21 GMT

Ok, so I think I am going to respond in multiple posts, in order to keep things manageable. Here goes!

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

Absolutely! I wish I had read these much sooner; they really illustrate the central themes in GRRM's writing and give me so many new ideas and theories. I love finally getting to discuss them!!

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

I will have to reread these before I can say much about them. I feel like in Mistfall I was disappointed that in the end, science explained away the legends. Laren Dorr was good, it's just been too long since I've read it. I forgot Bakkalon was even in it- this is making me want to move it to the top of my reread list!

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

But let me clean my glasses and return to our current discussion.

lol

Just so long as you clean them slowly, while reflecting on what you're about to say.

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

It's too bad they never mention HIS eye color... or that of his sworn brothers after he brought his bride back with him.

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

Ok... sorry to be this jaded... but I'm wondering if it isn't the nature of GRRM's Gods and GRRM's Men to destroy one another.

Lol! It's not jaded if it's true. I might rephrase it slightly to say GRRM's (f)Gods are the reason GRRM's Men destroy each other, but of course the end result is the same.

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

Yes, and I do believe you were right all along about the COTF not being the secret antagonists of the story. At the moment, having just reread this story, I am struggling to see them as very relevant at all, other than acting as hosts for Bran & Co (and possibly a subtle warning/red flag to readers). Instead, I fear that the weirwoods may be part of the anti-man coalition that also includes the Others. Which of course doesn't disagree with the premise of man being his own worst enemy: b/c if these old powers are trying to destroy men, surely men gave them a reason.

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

Makes a lot of sense. But then, would not the Iron Born be worshipping a drowned Old God, rather than their own original god? (Which still, makes a lot of sense to me)

Yes, exactly. Initially, they would have worshiped the Old Gods, just like all FM/early inhabitants of Westeros. (Before that, who knows? There are no records of any FM having any religion before the Old Gods, which is suspicious in and of itself). But then their greenseer drowned, yet they continued to worship him (rather than finding a new weirwood grove and greenseer, which presumably wasn't available on the islands). It's as if the Jaenshi stayed with their broken pyramid and prayed to the (nonfunctional) broken god beneath the snow. This is why they, uniquely among FM descendants, are not under the influence of greenseers or heart trees.

Dec 31, 2016 20:22:45 GMT voice said:

LOL! Lowering the bar is my specialty.

I do agree that GRRM gives us glimmers of hope within an otherwise pessimistic depiction of humanity. We could add Jaan Vikary and Annelyn to the list of characters who "grow" beyond the blind cultural practices of their people and seek to enact positive change in the world (the list of Al Gores, if you will). So far however, it doesn't seem like these are the winners in the end, does it?

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

Winter kills only the weak, and those without the means of making fire.

The Others are a weirwood's antibodies against the antigen of Man a-horse, wielding flame and sword.

A normal winter may only kill the weak... but Old Nan told us that during the Long Night, kings shivered and died in their castles just like peasants in their hovels. Those in Winterfell were probably an exception, but I suspect that that's more due to the hot springs than them being stronger than other men.

As for the Others, while they are certainly well suited to fight men on horses, D&D seem to be telling us that they are also expert dragon slayers. But I realize this is not a valid point until/unless it also happens in the books.

A more valid point may be the extreme flammability of wights. This seems like a less than perfect attribute for an army designed to fight men wielding fire.

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

Hmm. Did the Steel Angels destroy the plinths as well? B/c destruction of the pyramids seemed to clearly break the "spell" that held Jaenshi clans together and kept them under control. I do agree that the plinths are likely projecting religious images (and are therefore at the heart of this technology); otherwise a pyramid would have a hard time changing itself within seconds.

While I agree completely that keeping a respectful distance is preferable to destroying others' religions, I do wonder if neKroll wasn't "converted" b/c he did no harm, or if it was b/c he was not religious. The Jaenshi did make him many small pyramids, of many different gods. If he had shown a preference for one type, would the big pyramid have come to resemble that one? Or maybe one person is just not enough of a threat?

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

But what makes the FM different from the later arrivals? I would argue that the main difference is in their religion; they worship the trees while the Andals worship the Seven. So it appears the trees "helped" them find a sustainable niche..

What's throwing me off a little is that we haven't really seen that much evidence for an unsustainable culture even from the Andals. Yes they are found all over the seven kingdoms, but there seems to be quite a lot of wilderness that is still untouched. Not to mention the entire North, where there are no Andals. There is no industrialization, thus no climate change concerns. Overall, compared to Earth, Planetos seems to be in rather good shape, and Westeros seems in excellent shape compared to Essos.
Rather than burning entire forests, Man specifically targeted the weirwoods. So even if their reaction is merely defensive, it is still a somewhat selfish reaction, is it not?

As for the giants, you're probably right. I just can't help but wonder why in legends they seem so very different from the ones we see today.

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

When violent Men are confronted with the mystery of Peace, they assume nefarious forces are at work and that violence is needed, but violence only begets more violence.

In my experience, peace is not at all a difficult state to reach. It is only made difficult by violence. When we live and let live, it is easy to live. It takes far more work to hammer swords and train to kill with them. I find it is more enjoyable in life, and rewarding, to laugh with friends and make love with lovers than it is to mock a foe or throw a fist.

To put it in Newtonian terms (which I tend to do), peace is like inertia. It sustains itself. It requires effort (Force) to alter that peace.

A body at peace can indeed remain at peace. It does not require violence to get there. And in contrast, a peaceful body, acted upon in a violent way, becomes a violent contagion. And thus, the miasma spreads.

As a Biologist, I see this a little differently (though I must admit that ecology is not my field, so I am not trying to play the expert, lol). All species have the potential to overpopulate their habitat; what keeps them in check are mainly predation and limited resources - the two main factors which also fuel natural selection, which then selects for individuals who can survive and obtain enough resources. In other words, competition has been around since the time of the first life forms, and selection has favored the winners. This includes competition between species (i.e. FM vs COTF for land use) and within species (i.e. FM vs Andals). True peace is not something we see in nature very often, though it certainly CAN occur if two species don't need to compete (i.e. they have different niches within a habitat) or in cases of symbiotic relationships. But overall, it's a violent world out there.

I should add that a third factor limiting population size is disease ... which I left out b/c it doesn't really affect my point, positively or negatively. I suppose if diseases were common and greatly reduced populations regularly, this would eliminate the need for competition, and might promote peace...

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

A fire needs fuel, but wood is just fine staying wood.

Fire consumes, and Ice preserves. I was never sure what exactly this referred to - but the trees would certainly fit. Fire consumes weirwoods, Ice preserves them.

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

Hmm yes, but one must wonder WHY there are no weirwoods in Essos. We have heard tales of woods walkers and faces carved in trees, so the Old Gods religion seems to have existed there at some point. Did Essossi men simply destroy all the weirwoods? Or were they never there to begin with? Given that the two continents were once connected, and weirwoods seem to grow in a range of climates, this seems unlikely.
As for violence - yes, Essos is at least as bad, if not worse, than Westeros. But I am not trying to say that weirwoods promote violence in general; their goal is a peaceful, sustainable ecosystem (along with their own survival). I just meant that they may be willing to occasionally allow/promote violence if that is a necessary step to get there.

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

I suppose the question is- are these powers natural, or is blood sacrifice required to keep the trees functioning optimally? We do hear stories of FM sacrificing to weirwoods, and there is the Ironborn legend of Ygg, the demon tree that fed on human flesh. The roots growing all around and through the bones in the COTF tunnels are suspicious as well, IMO - not to mention BR himself is being consumed by a tree. Bran is told that the tree sustains him and keeps him alive past his normal lifespan- but is this really true? Maester Aemon is almost as old, yet he was never hooked up to any weirnet...

Jan 2, 2017 17:31:21 GMT voice said:

I don't think we disagree on the trees being antagonists to Man, or on Man giving them plenty of reasons to oppose humans. I am also not ruling out that the trees could be responsible for creating the Others - I just want the Others to have more depth than simply being a destructive army intent on wiping out humans, with no motive or intelligence of their own. I realize that saving the ecosystem is a noble cause, and that alone would distinguish them from "evil dark lords" in other fantasy series, but it doesn't seem to me that the ecosystem is on the brink of collapse, and I would really like a negotiated settlement at the end of all this, rather than a war or a sacrifice to appease the trees. In other words, if we use the House of the Worm analogy, I want the Others to be the grouns, not the eaterworms.

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Jan 2, 2017 19:53:34 GMT

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Post by voice on Jan 2, 2017 19:53:34 GMT

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Just so long as you clean them slowly, while reflecting on what you're about to say.

LOL! Talk about a fourth-wall break!

I must bow for the Westworld reference before I read any further. :bow

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Jan 2, 2017 21:41:58 GMT

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Post by voice on Jan 2, 2017 21:41:58 GMT

First Response...

I wanted to get some thoughts on the page before I forget them. Will come back to the rest in another post.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Absolutely! I wish I had read these much sooner; they really illustrate the central themes in GRRM's writing and give me so many new ideas and theories. I love finally getting to discuss them!!

maestercambodia , whitewolfstark , Lady Dyanna , LmL , and @morrigansraven were reading them too. (Apologies to those I'm forgetting!) Oh, and of course prestonjacobs is a scholar of them. He posted some interesting thoughts in the "...for a single yesterday" thread (not a part of the 1000 worlds, but will also remind you quite a bit of asoiaf).

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Re: Mistfall

Oh indeed! Quite disappointing. But that is what is so very striking to me about it. As one of his first published stories (maybe the first, irrc), I think it provides a nice bookend for his magnum opus, ~~Wild Cards~~ A Song of Ice and Fire.

Video killed the radio star in Mistfall, but in ASOIAF, the old powers are waking . . . we face giants and wargs and worse . . . and the trees have eyes again.

This is why I think GRRM has been telling this story since 1973. Yes, I am exaggerating, and conflating, and speculating upon speculation and innuendo.

...But not without reason. I think GRRM has been deeply concerned with the Sacred vs the Profane for a very long time and that this concern is his greatest muse. His love in conflict with his logic. Fire and Ice.

Mrs Voice will shoot me with an arrow if I do not give Titian his due credit:

Sacred and Profane Love, by Titian

I think science plays the part of GRRM's profane counterpart to some degree (see Qyburn's lab, or Cressen's wine). In Mistfall, we see the death of sacred love, strangled by science.

In ASOIAF, we have magical beings quite literally strangling skepticism from nonbeleivers (Will, Jon, Samwell). When the cold winds rise, and the Others ride upon them, it gets real hard to dismiss wetnurse tales and make japes about grumpkins and snarks.

Mistfall's snark was but a legend. A rumor. ASOIAF's snarks are as real as Waymar Royce's shattered blade.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

It's too bad they never mention HIS eye color... or that of his sworn brothers after he brought his bride back with him.

HIS, I'm thinking must've been the grey-blue eyes of Houses Stark and Karstark. The Grey Winter Sons.

His ensorcelled Sworn Brothers features, imo, are documented:

Bran wasn't so certain. The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan's scariest stories. It was here that Night's King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man.¹ This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered. This was the castle where King Sherrit had called down his curse on the Andals of old, where the 'prentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night², where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting³. Mad Axe had once walked these yards and climbed these towers, butchering his brothers in the dark⁴.

1. Their leader (Brandon the Builder)
2. we know what things come in the night
3. our eye color of the ensorcelled sworn brothers were like that of stars, cold and blue as sapphires
4. like Othor and Jafer Flowers, and the Cold Butchers in the AGOT Prologue, they slew brothers in the night

Re: Laren Dorr

Yes! We get a peek as to the true nature of Bakkalon as one of the Seven Wanderers of, imo, the Andal Faith.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Lol! It's not jaded if it's true. I might rephrase it slightly to say GRRM's (f)Gods are the reason GRRM's Men destroy each other, but of course the end result is the same.

LOL true.

Take credit where credit is due! :cheers

That is more than a mere rephrasing.

Brilliant. And far better than my gods vs mortals thingy.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Precisely my thinking. The cotf are merely dying archivists. Not that the death of curators is not tragic. It is of course quite tragic, particularly when said curators keep and sing language and songs that are completely unique and alien and might offer some much needed information.

But alas, I don't think the three-fingered tree-huggers are the demon-monkeys Black Crow and others imagine them to be. Like Tyrion, they simply have a realistic grasp of their fate:

Well, my legs may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I prefer to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind … and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge." Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow."

Bran has learned that the cotf are quite similar in their acceptance of bitter truths.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

I think there is some mention of the original gods of the First Men. We have tales of the Storm God at Storm's End, for example. And many sigils seem tied to such archetypes (the Falcon of House Arryn, the Black Bat of House Whent, mayhaps even the Direwolf), though it is of course hard to say with any degree of certainty. Still, we do have some tales, but even those must be taken with a grain of semi-canon, as many come from the world book.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

LOL! Lowering the bar is my specialty.

LOL! And yes, quite right. Our soothsayers are never heeded. At best, one might aspire to be marginalized, as the alternatives often lead to being mutilated, demonized, or murdered.

Although, one could say BR and Daenys the Dreamer had at least some successes. And the Ghost of High Heart wins her ballads. But alas yes, I wouldn't call any of them "winners."

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

Kings and peasants can be weak. :devil

And a keeping watch from a godswood can make one strong. :cool

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

As for the Others, while they are certainly well suited to fight men on horses, D&D seem to be telling us that they are also expert dragon slayers. But I realize this is not a valid point until/unless it also happens in the books.

True. And I'm not at all opposed to this idea. I'd prefer a world without fire-breathing dragons, myself. And as a member of TeamNK, I'm all in favor of seeing them encased in the icy trappings of ice spiders while the Others slide forward on silent feet. :spider

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

A more valid point may be the extreme flammability of wights. This seems like a less than perfect attribute for an army designed to fight men wielding fire.

Completely agree. But wights are fodder. Easily expendable and renewable. For every man you kill, you gain a sworn corpse. Flammability is a concern only if they are a finite resource.... and wights are only as finite as humanity itself. :devil

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

I seem to recall shattered red stone/glass/plastic around the pyramids, but I'd have to reread the passages to be sure.

Jan 2, 2017 19:49:24 GMT Maester Sam said:

While I agree completely that keeping a respectful distance is preferable to destroying others' religions, I do wonder if neKroll wasn't "converted" b/c he did no harm, or if it was b/c he was not religious. The Jaenshi did make him many small pyramids, of many different gods. If he had shown a preference for one type, would the big pyramid have come to resemble that one? Or maybe one person is just not enough of a threat?

I think neKroll remained himself. Rather than join in the seance, he continued to barter and profit as man is wont to do. He remained a Trader, whereas the Steel Angels did not remain, shall we say, angelic.

The slower I clean these glasses, and reflect upon it, the more interesting this contrast seems. neKroll remaind a Trader. Rather than demonstrate neKrol's trade was selfish and disasterous, and a fatal flaw in humanity, GRRM allowed him to die very much a hero. A martyr even. It reminds me of Jon Snow a bit. A man who stayed true to his own convictions, even as paranoia swept like a tide over his fellow men.

And Seven Times Never Kill Jon Snow! LOL

"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Jan 3, 2017 3:06:39 GMT

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Post by Lady Dyanna on Jan 3, 2017 3:06:39 GMT

Jan 3, 2017 3:00:54 GMT voice said:

maestercambodia , whitewolfstark , Lady Dyanna , LmL , and Morrigan were reading them too. (Apologies to those I'm forgetting!)

Sorry. I sort of ran out of steam on this one part way through. If I ever get back to them I'll be sure to come back and comment.

Why must I always be the isle of crazy alone in an ocean of sensibility?
The should to everybody else’s shouldn’t?
The I-will to their better-nots?

Maester Sam
Sansa Stark

There is nothing that the Others can do to men that men are not already doing to themselves.

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1000 Worlds - And Seven Times Never Kill Man! Jan 3, 2017 23:19:00 GMT voice likes this

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Post by Maester Sam on Jan 3, 2017 23:19:00 GMT

Time for Part 2

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

In Westeros, I think man is repeatedly forging and reforging things that imitate power. Swords, dragonglass daggers, nightfires, statues of the Seven, paintings of laughing trees...

Yesterday, I would have agreed with this statement 100%. However, having just reread Laren Dorr and The Plague Star, now I'm not so sure. Both feature a small crown made of some dark metal that protects the wearer. In Laren Dorr, Sharra the protagonist is wearing it, and she is surprised that Laren was able to heal her wounds despite this. He explains to her that the crown only prevents others (presumably only magical beings, since she was scratched up when she arrived) from harming her, not from helping her.
In TPS, Rita Dawnstar (how do you like that name! lol) wears it to control the T-rex. She says the Eco Engineers used these crowns for that purpose, that the weaponized predators were altered to give them psi abilities, and somehow the crown made them not harm the wearer (sound familiar?) and, in some cases, obey them.

So that sounds quite a bit like the dragon horns, for example. In theory, if you have one, dragons will obey you instead of eating you.

I agree that many other symbols are probably not really imbued with any real power, but I think there are at least a few exceptions.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

But always, they are but the cheap knock-off of power which men have made. What is unique about the Others, to me, is that they are not. Rather than be man-made imitations of power, I think they are the real power's imitation of Men.

I definitely agree that they have real power, and that they are modeled after men. The Tuf series is really pulling me toward the angle of genetic engineering though, which makes me wonder if men didn't create them after all. In Laren Dorr, it seems an established fact that some "men" (or gods, if you will) have certain powers. These include Laren himself and his flying castle, Sharra who travels between worlds, and her lover whose name I have already forgotten, but who had red hair and "fire in his eyes". Sharra tells Laren that this man was more powerful than herself. So within the 1000 worlds universe, some people have certain abilities that are not further explained in those stories. However, in Tuf Voyaging and to a lesser extent in some other stories, we learn exactly how such individuals could be created by their fellow men.

The weird races of humans on planetos seem perfect examples of engineered people, especially the ones in coastal regions with webbed hands, the Valyrians with their (relative) heat resistance and bond with dragons, and any of the skinchangers whose spirit animals are probably engineered as well. (Long ago, of course, and probably forgotten after that).

But I digress...

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

To me, they represent the implacability those trees felt. And yes, we know those trees can feel...and see...and even taste. Bloodraven tells us that

These weirwoods sound soo much like the mudpies in Guardians. Except the COTF and FM have found a way to enter this collective consciousness and thereby access its information.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

And therein lies the danger of religion in GRRM's worlds. It's the Sealord's Cat. It's Varys' riddle.

Confirmation bias, combined with religious ecstasy, is a damned scary thing. LOL

Who knows what those pyramids looked like to the Jaenshi. :devil

DAMN. It never even occurred to me that they would look different than they are described by neKroll. But of course, that's not only possible but likely. Great catch!

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

None of the Jaenshi attempted to make neKrol feel at home. I think this is another example that demonstrates that man will prove to be the antagonist, rather than weirwoods or the cotf.

I am starting to agree with this line of thinking. In fact, I am starting to wonder if neither the COTF nor the weirwoods had anything at all to do with creating the Others. They may be in the story partly as a red herring, and partly to allow Bran to learn what really occurred in the time around the LN.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

[Agreed. We'll discuss them over there. I have to add, though, that bronze is also heavily featured in the House of the Worm - we have bronze knights and bronze torch holders, for example. Despite their ancestors having had technology for fusing obsidian and building spaceships... ]

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

Blue flowers that can't be plucked... Do we know for sure if they even "grow"? Could they be made of plastic? That would be funny. But I haven't reread that one yet, so I have no idea.

As for magic being science that we don't understand - that's exactly how I am starting to view ASOIAF. I think in his mind, GRRM created a sci fi world, but he is keeping this from the reader so that it feels like fantasy. He wants us to experience events the way they are experienced by the primitive interregnum civilization that the story is about. Dragons are a typical fantasy element, for example, but they could also be engineered. [Cool aside: the Eco Engineers on the Ark wore green and gold suits - just like the dragon riders in The Ice Dragon. Coincidence?]
I doubt I'll have the time in the near future, but I really really want to attempt to explain the magic in ASOIAF using only the "technology" we've seen in the 1000 worlds stories. And see if I can arrive at a coherent story. B/c I'm starting to think it's possible...
Because really- what are the chances that GRRM spends his whole life writing sci fi, and then for his magnum opus he writes a fantasy story? Which just so happens to feature quite a few elements from his earlier works? We're starting to catch on to repeated themes and preferred settings; clearly, GRRM doesn't reinvent the wheel every time he comes up with a new story...

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

You're probably right. I doubt the Ironborn are the ones who have seen the light and will lead the others away from false gods. But I do view them as separate from other FM, and that may end up being important.

[As for the similarities between the Ironborn and the Dothraki, yes I agree. In fact, the Dothraki are against farming (it harms the earth), and the Greyjoy words are We Do Not Sow. Well, if one does not farm, one must pay the iron price for what one needs... giving rise to violent cultures that are feared by their neighbors.
I'm not sure the Ironborn "fear" the land; rather, they know their strength is at sea. Similarly, Dany does manage to get her handful of Dothraki into the ships, even though they hate it. Both cultures, however, fear the trees, which is another very interesting parallel...]

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

I have no idea who is whose parent anymore, but after these latest rereads I am warming up to the idea of the Daynes being truly important players. Sharra in Laren Dorr had Lyanna's grey eyes, but her hair was black with red highlights. Kind of like Darkstar has black hair with a silver streak. There is also the obvious similarity in names (along with Adara in the Ice Dragon, which really shouldn't be ignored).

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

I sadly didn't love Tuf Voyaging, but it has strong educational value for me. I love learning about the ship, both its construction (I have a new theory that the House of the Worm consists partly of a spaceship, buried in the sand after many millennia) and what it can do. We learn a lot about the Eco Engineers (EE) and their abilities, which is really cool. I don't particularly like Tuf, though, and I find the actual plot a bit lengthy/tedious at times. But then, maybe I just disapprove of people playing god.

I agree that Dying of the Light is probably the most emotional of the 1000 worlds stories; Laren Dorr was just too short for me to build a true connection to the characters, though it's certainly a tragic story.

I still need to reread Bitterblooms, and while I loved much of Nightflyers, I found the end a bit disappointing. It does have some great parallels though, so it'll be on my reread list as well.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

I'm a-squirming, Maester Sam . I've long feared my trust of the cotf and the trees was misplaced. But we all have to have our lines in the sand.

:commie

LOL

If you read A Song for Lya as if the main characters are Jon Snow's parents, Ned's "wolf-blood" sentiments make a lot of sense.

The story is about "Lyanna" and the man she loved, after all.

LOL. We all have our favorite elements on planetos that we hope will be "good" in the end. As long as your trees aren't controlling my Others, we can all get along.

Still haven't reread ASFL... I'll get on that.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

Guardians does fit your miasma theory perfectly. And I am fairly certain that the trees did mount a defense against the FM, as a result of being attacked and burned. I am just starting to lean toward them using a resource that was already available - the COTF - to be their "guardians", rather than creating a whole new race. The COTF did, eventually, negotiate the Pact, which should have given the trees what they wanted. Creating the Others after that just seems like overkill, IMO, and (while I understand your point about tree time) seems a little unfair to the FM who by that time had fallen into line and had been worshiping the trees for a thousand years. If the creation of the Others was simply a misunderstanding ("sorry, FM, we're in a different time zone"), then Man is no longer responsible, is he? B/c by that time, he had changed his ways and was living sustainably.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

I'm thinking that the wiser men of both races agreed to the Isle as a meeting place after some of the conversion of FM had already begun. None of this negates your angle, but I think the mind-control we see in this story is precisely that. It controls every aspect of the lives of it's slaves. In asoiaf, weirwood influences seem far less widespread, far more subtle, and far more selective.

Rather than inhabit the minds of everyone in proximity, a weirwood must be wed by one with the gift. And one with the gift is incredibly rare.

This is true, and the fact that the FM have all sorts of eye colors supports your point. I am slowly moving away from the weirwoods directly controlling Man; it seems more likely that they influence them more subtly via the greenseers. I'm not sure about the COTF though; like the Jaenshi, they all have golden eyes and most seem to live in proximity to weirwoods. It can't be the exact same type of control, of course, b/c Leaf for example does travel and presumably spent days/weeks without seeing a weirwood, but I still suspect the weirwoods (possibly via visions sent by greenseers, or via crow supervision) are the driving force behind most COTF actions.

Jan 3, 2017 18:31:17 GMT voice said:

That's one ten-thousanth of one percent of the population who are greenseers.

[side note: this ratio may mean that the population of Westeros is between 1 and 2 million people, as it currently yields between 1 and 2 greenseers]

So why did I do all this math? In ASTNKM, every clan has its "Talker" and every clan numbers 20-30, half of which are adults and half of which are children. Even if we include the children, that means 3.33% to 5% of Jaenshi are Talkers. That is a far more potent ratio of influence than we see in asoiaf, except....

We have a GINORMOUS concentration of this influence in the current generation of youngsters from Winterfell. 6/6 are wargs, to varying degrees. Of the six, at least one is a bona fide greenseer. That's pretty damned impressive.

Considering only two Starks in the previous generation were even said to have "wolf-blood" then that certainy seems to suggest something occurred in the current generation to increase this concentration.

It seems as though 100% of the Kings of Winter were also wargs, unless people were lying when scuplting all those dead Starks. I don't think they were... at least, not until 200 years ago.

So, crackpot alert, I'm thinking Starks once had a far greater concentration of this influence than other First Men families. I have a hunch that thier Godswood was always and ever inhabited by a Stark Greenseer. And I think that this is what the "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell" mantra is all about.

Pretty damned impressive indeed! Wow, I never thought of it quite that way.

Of course, something did occur in the current generation- they received direwolves. Although, as I have mentioned before somewhere, Bran's wolf dreams don't begin until the comet is in the sky. This is also the night the dragons hatch, so it does appear that "something's in the air".

Wow, yes, the Kings of Winter were all wargs! I wonder if we can pinpoint when the trait was "lost"?

It does seem as though the Starks are more "gifted" than most FM families. It also seems reasonable that there should be a weirwood throne underneath Winterfell. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether one tree is enough for a throne? It seems that in the cases of Bran/BR and Beric, as well as the cave Arianne finds in the Rainwood, greenseers usually live below whole groves of weirwoods. The Ghost of High Heart with her red eyes also lives among many weirwoods (albeit dead ones). So that's my only hangup about the throne beneath WF.

What's interesting about "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" is that it seems that ANY Stark will do. So whoever first said this was apparently assuming that ALL Starks would have the gift. Which would be extreme, wouldn't it, if every Stark had the potential to be a greenseer?
Then there is the eye color dilemma. COTF greenseers have red eyes. BR has red eyes. But none of the Starks do, and neither does Euron, who apparently was also recruited. In fact, red eyes among humans are extremely rare in the story; the only example that readily comes to mind is Mel. And that can't be right. Lol.

I am bracing myself for some sort of tragic/dark reveal about House Stark. Yes they are magical, but those icy grey eyes don't say "greenseer" to me. BR is referred to as the last greenseer, so how likely is it that this is Bran's future? For now, if I had to interpret the Stark in Winterfell rule, I would guess that Starks can hear/understand the heart tree, allowing greenseers to communicate with them. If I am right and the COTF/weirwoods are mainly an information repository, and have info about the FM/Other relationship, this would be a very relevant skill for the Stark in WF.

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