Post by LmL on May 10, 2016 2:41:58 GMT
Were you the one that brought up Moat Cailin in possible conjunction to this? I remember reading it somewhere but cant remember where...
Yes, kind of. There are two kinds of mysterious black stone which may or may not overlap, so far as I can tell: fused stone which is made with dragon fire and sorcery (Valyrian cities and roads, Battle Isle, and the Five Forts), and greasy or oily black stone (Asshai, Yeen, Isle of Toads, Seastone Chair), whose origins are mysterious. Moat Cailin's black basalt blocks are said to look as though they were coated in some fine black oil one rainy morning in ADWD when Theon goes there to deceive the Ironborn, sp it may be in that category too. It's inconclusive, but, Moat Cailin is absolutely inexplicable in my opinion as a construction of the First Men. The blocks are high, and nowhere else did the First Men build anything like it. Also, it must have been built before the Neck was flooded, because you can't built a castle with cottage-sized blocks of basalt in a swamp. That means it was built before the Hammer of the Waters dropped - a long fucking time ago. And again, nothing else the FM built compares, at all. So, it's a prime candidate to have been built by "the men who came before the First Men," whoever they are, and if it is indeed oily black stone, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
So, Moat Cailin is not fused stone, and Battle Isle is not oily or greasy. Battle Isle is like all fixed stone - no hint of joint or seam, whereas MC is built from huge square blocks of hewn stone. The building style at MC is actually an exact match for Yeen, fwiw, which is also built from huge blocks of oily black stone. It's possible that there was more than one mysterious and forgotten ancient presence in Dawn Age Westeros - the dragonlords who built Battle Isle, and whomever is such a big fan of building with toxic oily stone (Deep Ones, anyone?)