Benjen Stark, the inquest. Close encounters of a cold kind.
Apr 10, 2017 5:51:36 GMT
pieceofgosa likes this
Post by voice on Apr 10, 2017 5:51:36 GMT
Mayhaps. LOL
I'm likely guilty as charged, on this front.
But the books themselves are rather upfront and obvious when it comes to fire. Ice is the side that tends to be unexplained and/or buried beneath the snows of obfuscation.
Your "simple explanation" seems a bit more complicated than the one found in the Annals:
A Feast for Crows - Samwell I
"Long ago," Jon broke in. "What about the Others?"
"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night . . . or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night . . . or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
We have very few repeated conversations in ASOIAF. Our POV chapters usually fall in sequence, rather than overlap. The conversation regarding the Annals of Castle Black are the sole exception:
A Dance with Dragons - Jon II
"Long ago," Jon broke in. "What about the Others?"
"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night … or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
"I found mention of dragonglass. The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred obsidian daggers every year, during the Age of Heroes. The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night … or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."
Othor and Jafer rose south of the Wall because they fell in battle against the Others. All the other dead at Castle Black are not being raised as wights, because they did not fall to the Others.
Wighthood is a unique event. Not all who die become wights. Only those who die from the Others, or the cold they bring, seem to be cursed with their starry-eyed zombie-ism.
Oh hell yeah! Big time. Gared had to have been an Old Gods swearer. But then, Waymar probably was too. I guess it matters not though, once one draws castle forged steel against an Other's icy longsword.
LOL! Well, yeah!
Nothing wrong with live-tweeting asoiaf reasoning.
If so, it certainly seems odd that two wights would show up once the magical powers seem to be awakening, rather than during the prior centuries of decay.
I think a more plausible explanation would be that the Others have been gone for a very long time. During that absence, men forgot about things they used to know. This age of ignorance eventually consumed the Night's Watch (as well as a quarter of America's electorate):
"Spare me your but's, boy," Lord Mormont interrupted. "I would not be sitting here were it not for you and that beast of yours. You fought bravely … and more to the point, you thought quickly. Fire! Yes, damn it. We ought to have known. We ought to have remembered. The Long Night has come before. Oh, eight thousand years is a good while, to be sure … yet if the Night's Watch does not remember, who will?"
Only a fool would have brought corpses home during the Long Night. But the Night's Watch forgot that they should burn the bodies that seem dead by light of day. They forgot that shadows come to dance after dusk. They forgot about cold, and fire.
Several issues here. First, the land bridge was destroyed thousands of years prior to the Long Night. Second, the Doom did not rid the world of dragons. Dragons lived in Westeros before Targaryens ever visited. (They chose Dragonstone because dragons nested there.) And dragons remained a force in the world for many thousands of years after the Doom – hence, Aegon the Conqueror. Without dragons, there would be no 7k.
Dragons aren't nature's answer. Dragons are fire and blood. Dragons destroy life.
And unlike direwolves and people, dragons do not hatch from good ole fashioned sex. Instead, they require magical manipulation. That isn't natural.
I suspect the Others share a similar/opposite form of magical multiplication. So far, we've seen them increase their numbers using corpses. Dragons do the same (i.e., Dany's funeral pyre).
. sorry that is the closest emo to Old Nan i could find...