they store a frickton of provisions and invite commonfolk in during the winters
also bear in mind on planetos summer can last a literal generation
They're not gonna be able to store much in there. Certainly not for a decade. And all those flat roofs are going to collapse at the first heavy snowfall. Not only that, but the key theme of Game of Thrones was that no one got around to storing anything before the war kicked off, killed all the farmers and burned their farms. No one was able to store jack shit and was guaranteed to all starve and freeze especially if they had to take in the masses from the other towns.
winterfell is built on a hotspring and they pipe it throughout the castle to keep it warm. the snow won't last on its roof
also at no point does anything other than the neck and the coast really experience the war so your second point is horseshit
you're confusing seigneurialism with feudalism.
they aren't the samething at all.
also you're a moron, as substinence farming at a local level wasn't practiced by so-called capital cities anywhere near the medieval age.
Although most castles were surrounded by farmland, some weren't. Winterfell could have been built on some strategic highland that wouldn't support local soil farming, but would instead have sheep or cattle that could be traded with agrarian areas.
You can’t really take the shows word for it since D&D have been fricking useless from the start, George just took the first team to offer him generational wealth and knew RLJ.
"muh farms right up to the city walls" is an example of peak midwittism.
What started out as legitimate criticism of particular examples gets parroted without any thought for context.
The better criticism of Westeros is the complete lack of actual cities and towns. As I understand there is Lannisport, Hightower and King's Landing. Everything else shown is a fort or a castle.
Europe had hundreds of cities with at least 10 thousand people and dozens with 100 thousand living in them during the Medieval period.
NONE of that is seen or even implied in the TV show.
As I understand, in the books all the major castles like Winterfell are much larger and basically have a city around them.
>As I understand, in the books all the major castles like Winterfell are much larger and basically have a city around them.
Winterfell is not only big but they've also got Winter Town, which is a sprawling town outside the walls that commoners live in during Winter. In summer only a small part of it is lived in because the commoners are spread out tending to farms and chopping woods etc, but once winter arrives they gather in Winter Town to have access to the food and wood stored in Winterfell.
>Bee hives for honey
in sub-arctic conditions? have you ever been outside a city? bees are net consumers of calories once temperatures drop below about 50F.
You can buy food from the Reach and Essos during the winter in this world. Jon Snow even takes out a loan from a Braavosi banker to pay for supplies for the Night's Watch in the book.
>Winters still last 5+ years >they only had primitive preserving techniques >Winters still last 5+ years >Winters still last 5+ years >Winters still last 5+ years
i dunno -40C sounds pretty advanced
they store a frickton of provisions and invite commonfolk in during the winters
also bear in mind on planetos summer can last a literal generation
one of the biggest worldbuilding flaws I think is there's no additional infrastructure for storing of food or it's not treated as a much bigger deal. The Riverlands was almost completely devasted in the war on the cusp of winter the people don't have food now let alone for years of possible winter
how can anybody possible store enough food for years and years of winter where you're producing nothing outside of hunting which would increasingly become lean
There are plenty of stories in universe of people having to cannibalize each other in past winters or them having massive population dips. Again, you just figured out a plot point! Good job!
>a civilisation lasted thousands of years having to eat each other every generation or so
Also this isn't plot
3 months ago
Anonymous
>>a civilisation lasted thousands of years having to eat each other every generation or so
But enough about China.
3 months ago
Anonymous
China was constantly invaded by foreigners who set up new governments, not one contiguous thing
3 months ago
Anonymous
>40,000 people eaten >decisive chinese victory
3 months ago
Anonymous
>a civilisation lasted thousands of years
No it didn't, actually. The people currently alive just think it lasted thousands of years because every winter they'd lose 90% of the population and so the tales passed down through generations were fricked because even kings would starve or freeze some winters. It was only when writing was introduced that they tried to make sense of the tales passed down and they inflated the years by huge amounts to make things make sense.
You can buy food from the Reach and Essos during the winter in this world. Jon Snow even takes out a loan from a Braavosi banker to pay for supplies for the Night's Watch in the book.
probably have teams of hunters who go get big game, teams of gatherers who go south to where the land is more farmable. it wasnt super snowy at the beginning right? cuz like half the show is every character saying winter is cumming. so maybe at the start of the show the weather was more amenable to farming close to winterfell
There's no mention of potatoes in ASOIAF so apparently they don't have them, but none of the Earth products that are mentioned in the book, (humans, horses, turnips, etc) are native to Planetos, as the planet isn't Earth and thus was colonized from Earth and as we currently don't have the capability for interstellar travel, the events in the book are from our future.
why build the wall curved around the woods when they could just build it straight to the other city wall using less materials and have more defended space?
smallfolk are killed all the time for any and everything. A tavern keep can be killed by a wandering brigand just because he's drunk or in a bad mood. So it depends where you're growing up and also what season. More kids/teens lived to adulthood during the long summer.
>Be farmer >Some fookin sea Black folk come in hell themselves to your shit and "buy" your kids off you to burn and pass off as other dead kids
>Be butcher >The fricking King comes through town >Your son is asked to play by a lords gal and it ends with the hound slaughtering your son for playing with the pussy prince too hard
>Be other farmer >Little girl and her scarred dad need place to stay >They rob you >You and your daughter starve to death that winter
>Be tavern keeper >Somehow the king and some lords get wrapped up on a child murder(the butchers boy) >Your business gets cleared out and used as an impromptu court room >It was the weekend and supposed to be one of your busiest nights >Lose a good couple wages pay worth of customers
>Be other tavern keeper >Your kids died cause they just fricking do in this undervisrse >Some band of scum comes through >Fat kid eats so much you have to take him as an indentured servant to pay off the debt he tallied up emptying your food reserves
right, my bad. I think however, that were the others to win the war for the dawn eventually the entire planet would become an ice world so no where is truly safe
>be hedge wizard, calling your silly tricks and sleight of hand “magic” like an idiot >be woods witch, calling your herbal tea and midwifery “magic” like an idiot >be maester, studying rare arcane lore that will amount to fricking nothing >be alchemist, drinking mercury like a crazy person, claiming it does wonders >be pyromancer, making green shit that can barely be handled without exploding >be poisoner, poisoning people like a cowardly and conniving woman >be warlock, sipping LSD like a hippy, thinking it’s real mystical insight >be red priest, burning your retina like an idiot, for maaaaybe a lousy vision >be dreamer, get dreams that want to hurt you or even kill you (or cripple you) >be skinchanger, hoping your bear or mountain lion won’t eat your face >be greenseer, crippling yourself and attaching your body to a creepy tree >be crannogman, “breathing” mud like a frog and looking malnourished af >be maegi, pray to the great shepherd you won’t be raped by horse men
A common theme with magic is that “these people are idiots”
When it comes to “magic” (“science” that isn’t truly science), one likely has to dumb themselves down, or at the very least entertain the arcane. It is irresponsible.
Even the most wizardly/sagely of past geniuses and brilliant minds were lacing their limited, lacking understanding (for the time) with the arrogance of the imagination. Why not?
Archmaester Marwyn comes across as an insane learned man, no different from historical physicians like Paracelsus—the original coomer—who thought cooming into a chicken egg would produce a slave creation: the Homunculus. It stuck.
>no different from historical physicians like Paracelsus—the original coomer—who thought cooming into a chicken egg would produce a slave creation: the Homunculus
I had to look this up.
‘That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"[1]], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.’[2]:328–329
>no different from historical physicians like Paracelsus—the original coomer—who thought cooming into a chicken egg would produce a slave creation: the Homunculus
I had to look this up.
‘That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"[1]], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.’[2]:328–329
What the frick did I just read?
People really need to understand that smart *and* stupid go hand-in-hand together like peanut butter and jam.
>"I trust that your guild brothers are not engaging in any unseemly haste, Wisdom. We do not want ten thousand jars of defective wildfire, nor even one . . . and we most certainly do not want any mishaps."
>"There will be no mishaps, my lord Hand. The substance is prepared by trained acolytes in a series of bare stone cells, and each jar is removed by an apprentice and carried down here the instant it is ready. Above each work cell is a room filled entirely with sand. A protective spell has been laid on the floors, hmmm, most powerful. Any fire in the cell below causes the floors to fall away, and the sand smothers the blaze at once."
I like the covered hoardings on the round towers but why don't they have any on the square towers. Or the walls for that matter, they live in the north it'd be even more important since they wouldn't want their wall walks iced over
also why would they have that patch of trees outside the walls that close, that just creates a dead zone for the enemy to approach from
It’s even funnier imaging how this castle is supposed to be defended
The castle itself houses the family, servants and some guards, then there’s a few houses outside, the high seat of the north is defended by what, 50-100 people at best?
If you look at maps of europe you'll not that all major cities are on the coast and next to a river
Water was extremely important for sustaining a population. It has food as you can fish, use the water to grow crops, and its the cheapest way to move stuff and humans around to trade via boats.
Then in every nordic country where theres 4 seasons the capital is in the south because warmer weather allows more food production and less resources to keep masses of people alive.
I don't think grrm did a lot of thinking on the Geographic side of things.
I’m going to be honest, given that his books are all POV or written from a biased maester (or septon, or fool, etc).
The inconsistency of the world adds to the air of mystery in the world. People are sharing conflicting accounts all the time. In the world book, the maester claims the Seasnake never sailed as far as Asshai. In F&B, it is claimed he did sail to Asshai.
The Asshai’i believe Casterly Rock is a palace made entirely out of gold, ruled by a lion. People are exaggerating up the ass. Misinterpretations are everywhere.
Winterfell is located where it is because it has hot springs, which not only keep the entire castle warm even in winter, they also power greenhouses for food production.
But the North in general is very sparsely populated for its size. Barely anyone lives up there, it's just a giant mostly empty landmass.
The other capital cities are located at the coast or at major rivers. The North is a weird outlier with different rules.
winterfell is pretty special in that it was built in the literal spot WHERE WINTER FELL, aka the great other was defeated by azor ahai, during the last long night
below it is the only hot spring in the region, and probably a magical one at that
yeah irl hot springs exist due to movement of tectonic plates
like how japan and iceland have them because they're near edges of the plates but there isn't any in northern europe
arguing that planetos doesn't act like earth is moronic. there are geographic features of westeros that were literally shaped by magic. the stepstones were destroyed by children of the forest magic, the neck was nearly destroyed as well by the same magic but they whiffed it and now its just a swamp instead
there is a fire god that brings his devout back to life routinely
there are dragons and ice zombies
but a hotspring existing magically? wtf bro that's all tectonic plates n shit bro
3 months ago
Anonymous
saying something is fantasy and therefore everything goes is moronic
Sometimes the author just sucks and cba make research that would make the book better.
Otherwise you can imagine a monkey god shitting his ass out in a middle of a frozen wasteland and people make a big city there because the manure keeps things warm. Its fantasy after all, who cares.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I keep thinking that the ‘hammer of the waters’ is a regionally determined thing, since the Arm sunk/broke successfully, while the Neck was only partially flooded. The Wall can be seen as a third magic attempt of some sort. Perhaps. Assuming it was built to keep men away/out.
3 months ago
Anonymous
It was a botched spell. The tower of the children is broken. They probably got hit by a lightning bolt mid-ritual.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The magic of the Old Gods is fueled by blood sacrifices (like most magic in this world). They probably didn't have enough people to sacrifice to pull off a second hammer successfully.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>The magic of the Old Gods is fueled by blood sacrifices
What about skin changing and green dreaming? People are born with that.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Horrible interracial interactions had to occur in the deep past for such to be born the way they are.
The Starks are only skinchangers because they slew a past ‘warg king’ and raped his daughters. Yeah…
It is implied that the Starks of old were horrible rulers. Or just bad people.
3 months ago
Anonymous
That’s part of the pact, it’s why Ned always cleans off ice at his weirwood so it can drink the blood. In exchange the weirwoods give warg/seer powers. But then on top of that starks have ancient covenants with the old gods/others
The Night’s Watch also makes “sacrifices”, in the form of oaths. Their lives are the Wall’s now.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah that’s probably the magic in the wall that keeps getting referenced
This seems like bullshit, because the Starks haven't had a warg in centuries and then suddenly get potentially 5 at once
All starks have it dormant but they need an animal companion to awaken it, Bloodraven sent the Direwolf because he wanted to awaken it in them, if it was specifically just for bran and the others were a cost of doing business or if he had machinations for the others is unclear, then you have Jon being targeted by the others for some reason I dunno if they care if he’s a warg or not. And it’s hard to say if Bloodraven and the others are allied since he undermines them from time to time but the trees are obviously very very mischievous
3 months ago
Anonymous
i think its pretty clear the old gods are opposed to the others given the prior conflicts between the others and the children in millennia past
3 months ago
Anonymous
Probably but I think it’s too on the nose
3 months ago
Anonymous
That’s part of the pact, it’s why Ned always cleans off ice at his weirwood so it can drink the blood. In exchange the weirwoods give warg/seer powers. But then on top of that starks have ancient covenants with the old gods/others
3 months ago
Anonymous
This seems like bullshit, because the Starks haven't had a warg in centuries and then suddenly get potentially 5 at once
3 months ago
Anonymous
Perhaps the death/sacrifice of such a fruitful beast (dire wolf) against another majestic creature (the stag) kickstarted their genes. The beginning of the book is extremely symbolic of events to come.
3 months ago
Anonymous
George likes doing these complicated family trees, it's usually not as simple as "Starks are all wargs".
It's more likely a bunch of magical family lines happened to come together in that particular Stark generation. The Tully line from Catlyn was probably involved too in some way too. Old God magic is also found in the Riverlands.
Bloodraven, one of the most powerful individuals in the series, was created from the union of the Old God Blackwood family and the Targaryans.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>The Tully line from Catlyn was probably involved too in some way too. Old God magic is also found in the Riverlands.
feel like there is some reason that Catelyn's mother was a Whent as it so far hasn't really came up to have any plot purpose. there could be some hint that the families that held Harrenhal did actually intermarry and she was a descendant of Aemond Targaryen and that Strong bastard girl
3 months ago
Anonymous
>it’s why Ned always cleans off ice at his weirwood so it can drink the blood
a beautiful ritual regardless, to be sure
3 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah telepathy seems to be something you are just born with based on genetics. But we also see Bran being strengthened by being fed blood paste made from another Greenseer.
And at least with the Valyrians it seems like the telepathic bond they have with dragons was created via blood magic and can also be strengthened via blood sacrifices.
The origin of the Northern/Children telepathy isn't really explored at all, so hard to say how it was originally created in the first generation.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>The origin of the Northern/Children telepathy isn't really explored at all, so hard to say how it was originally created in the first generation.
The CotF, not being actual children, likely kidnapped humans to breed with, or just abuse sexually.
>Valyrians
Some Targaryens are born sickly until they bond to a dragon, denoting a sort of symbiosis.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Some Targaryens are born sickly until they bond to a dragon, denoting a sort of symbiosis.
Both Dragons and Dragon-Riders appear to be genetically engineered chimeras.
Dragons were created via blood magic from the highly magical Firewyrms
and the non-magical Wyverns of Sothoryos.
Valyrian Dragon Riders on the other hand gained their telepathic bond with dragons by being actually part dragon.
Septon Barth talks about how Valyrians were masters at creating chimeras. So this kind of magical weapon development kind of makes sense. Though dragons predate the Valyrian empire. They probably learned about the mechanics from the Empire of the Dawn and either studied existing dragons or straight up re-created them.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The worms (wyrms?) inside Aerea also had ‘faces’ and ‘hands’ and horrible voices, which may imply or attest to a sort of ‘Xenomorph logic’, in that they acquire the traits of their host.
The bond between rider and dragon may be a leftover of that. It’s also worth noting that dragon eggs stay dormant in the same manner as some parasitic worm eggs. Curious, no?
I don’t actually think dragons are entirely reptilian. Wyrms might be closer to worms.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>The worms (wyrms?) inside Aerea also had ‘faces’ and ‘hands’ and horrible voices, which may imply or attest to a sort of ‘Xenomorph logic’, in that they acquire the traits of their host.
Yeah either they adapt to their hosts and that is the most basic building block of how to create a chimera (I like that theory), or alternatively the Wyrms found in Aerea were just escaped Chimera experiments that got out of their cages after the Fall of Valyria and somehow flourished in the boiling ruins.
3 months ago
Anonymous
they certainly weren't, since goat herders discovered them in the 14 flames before the freehold even existed
i always tell anons to read martins other books in the 1000 worlds to get more insight, eg, in the house of the worm, the ecological engineering corps create giant worms to battle their long time foes, the githyanki/harrangan; by the time the story starts, the world and the sun is dying, the human population has regressed to a mix between stone age and medieval age and everyone has forgotten their ancestors civilisation, eccept in oblique hints
The valyrians of old were simply sheepherders, imo, and somehow were taken in and experimented upon by the eeg to form a human worm hybrid, the valyrians of the 14 flames are a cargo cult of this original experimentation and try to unsuccessfully create chimeras every so often
3 months ago
Anonymous
are the otthers aliens from an ice moon then or what
3 months ago
Anonymous
no, they are synthetic beings created by the hrangan/githyanki, that get activated during certain events, for that matter, only the cotf are natives to westeros, the others are genetic abominations created by experimenting on them
You know the red comet just before dany's dragon eggs hatch? well in his tuf voyaging, grrm has a story of a defunct eeg spacecraft orbiting in space around the planets orbit, when it becomes visible in the horizon, observed as a sort of a comet, the planet natives, the hrangan/githyanki created beings suffer massive biological issues, mysterious illness, stillbirth, other malaise which greatly reduces their population once every some generations
3 months ago
Anonymous
The worms (wyrms?) inside Aerea also had ‘faces’ and ‘hands’ and horrible voices, which may imply or attest to a sort of ‘Xenomorph logic’, in that they acquire the traits of their host.
The bond between rider and dragon may be a leftover of that. It’s also worth noting that dragon eggs stay dormant in the same manner as some parasitic worm eggs. Curious, no?
I don’t actually think dragons are entirely reptilian. Wyrms might be closer to worms.
I don’t think the Valyrians were the first to create dragons, but I do think they were the best at breeding them.
3 months ago
Anonymous
they certainly weren't, since goat herders discovered them in the 14 flames before the freehold even existed
3 months ago
Anonymous
That always struck me as a kind of mythological story that doesn't have much to do with the actual history. Always seemed silly that some goat herders would figure out the secrets of dragons randomly. It's more likely that Valyria was some kind of offshoot of the Empire of the Dawn.
Dragons definitely already existed prior to Valyria. The Empire of the Dawn at least had dragons around, though maybe not necessarily dragon riders. Their ancient castles were shaped by dragon fire.
Imagine a medieval man seeing a BMW, screaming “sorcery! wizardry!” in utter fricking amazement, to which the driver responds with “nahhh it’s just a thing”, then drives off like nothing just happened.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>“nahhh it’s just a thing” >drives off like nothing just happened >hits a rock in the field, puncturing the aluminum oil pan >Cuts off a carriage while merging on to the road(didn't indicate) >spins out on the dirt path and careens into a tree
Ultimate Driving Machine™
3 months ago
Anonymous
>bimmer driving anywhere pre paved roads
If he so much as touched the throttle it would be spinning its wheels and spraying the village down with wet mud
>historically castles were small on purpose and typically had garrison of only few hundred, the largest castle ever built, a crusader castle had a garrison of a thousand >this is because, the castle allowed bottleneck, thus 100 men could defend against 1,000 and hold out
>in Martin's world all castles are gigantic and require a garrison of thousands, making them completely unsustainable
Is the author a hack? The more I think of his worldbuilding more I hate it
planetos has a much larger population than real life
the kingdoms of westeros have a combined feudal levy of well over a million
all of europe couldn't have managed this under the same system by a factor of two or more
your argument is moronic, it was in the medieval era that small professional armies were recognized as vastly superior to any levy, destroying entire peasant armies with minimal to zero casualties even when outnumbered 20 to 1.
Paris alone had a population of at least 250k in 1300, and that's with generational famine, war, and plague.
250k is nothing. king's landing and old town double that, lannisport probably matches it
3 months ago
Anonymous
Westeros is more like 800AD with plate mail
a 1 million peasant levy doesn't beat an army of 50k man at arms in any scenario beyond the most ridiculous, so the point is moot.
3 months ago
Anonymous
ok but westeros has both thoughbeit
3 months ago
Anonymous
Mobilizing 1 million peasants would be a moronic thing to do. That's a million guys not doing agricultural labour to sustain the entire society. The modern equivalent would be converting every farm tractor in the country into a tank and sending them to the front.
>destroying entire peasant armies with minimal to zero casualties even when outnumbered 20 to 1
post an example
3 months ago
Anonymous
You won't find them on Wikipedia because they aren't considered battles.
But for instance any of the peasant revolts in Normandy during English occupation in the 100 years war, where thousands of peasants were regularly massacred by small garrisons of 200-300 men.
3 months ago
Anonymous
In 1381 angry English peasants stormed the Tower of London, the stronghold of the King, and controlled the whole city for some time
3 months ago
Anonymous
Peasants already in a city can and have successfully attacked a city's garrison or gotten them to surrender the garrison countless times, doesn't mean anything when it comes to a battle though.
Regular castles build at the time of the main plot are small in that world too. In the hedgeknight series we see a bunch of small castles and towers.
The seats of the big houses were build thousands of years ago and not for battles against humans. Their strategic value isn't really that great in actual warfare, except as (almost) impenetrable retreats as a last resort.
Great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves, savory duck, peppered boar, goose, skewers of pigeon and capon, beef-and-barley stew, cold fruit soup.
Twenty casks of fish from White Harbor packed in salt and seaweed; whitefish and winkles, crabs and mussels, clams, herring, cod, salmon, lobster and lampreys. Black bread and honeycakes and oaten biscuits, turnips and peas and beets, beans and squash and huge red onions, baked apples and berry tarts and pears poached in strongwine.
Black stout and yellow beer and wines red and gold and purple, brought up from the warm south on fat-bottomed ships and aged in his deep cellars. Cod cakes and winter squash, hills of neeps and great round wheels of cheese, on smoking slabs of mutton and beef ribs charred almost black, and lastly on three great wedding pies, as wide across as wagon wheels, their flaky crusts stuffed to bursting with carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork swimming in a savory brown gravy.
Maybe the Others are the original inhabitants of the world.
The length and strengths of summers seems to be linked to fire magic somehow, so maybe winter is the normal state for the world and the summers are a tool of alien colonization.
Nah, even in the books there's clear setups for The Children having created them when you read the different stories told of the far past, enough that I guessed it before the show ever got anywhere near that far. The First Men were pushing their shit in by outbreeding them(even after they broke the land bridge connecting Westeros and Essos) and having more brute strength, and so they created ice beings to fight them, making their new weapon incredibly vulnerable to dragonglass because that was The Children's choice of weapon. But then the Others learnt how to raise the dead Men and the dead were invulnerable to dragonglass, so The Children now had to join forces with the First Men to drive back their own rebellious creation.
That's why the Night's Watch have old records of a treaty saying The Children must deliver a set amount of dragonglass to the Watch each year, it's war reparations to arm them against the remaining Others and to make sure the Children can't do the same thing again because now both of them have the same weapons. It was after this treaty was made that the First Men started worshipping the Old Gods with The Children and swore to leave the woods to them and never cut down another Weirwood. This treaty held until the Andals arrived and cut all the Weirwoods down in their religious fervour, severing the people's connection to the Weirnet and so they could no longer access the memories stored there, causing them to forget their history and have it supplanted by the Andal stories about heroic knights and grand magical castles built by Bran The Builder.
D&D just fricked all of that up by being too lazy to differentiate between Others and Wights, making both of them die from one dragonglass stab. The Children should have been able to deal with them all on their own if that was the case.
All you gotta do is read between the lines and go by the time Tarly stabbed a wight and the dragonglass broke. If all they had to do is wear armour then the Others wouldn't be described as all ice.
its really boring if they just turn out to be le creation that went out of control!
maybe they are but I prefer it being something about interwedding with Starks. Which seems not too long of a shot considering how interested they seem to be in Jon (in the books)
>maybe they are but I prefer it being something about interwedding with Starks.
There's no reason that couldn't also have happened later, though? The Others are clearly sentient, which is why they rebelled. More likely though that story is based on a situation like Coldhands though. Where a warg died but managed to flee before death and then managed to warg back into their own body, just like Jon will most likely end up being resurrected. Creating a sentient wight that was somehow pretty enough that a Stark wanted to marry her, horrifying those around him. Maybe the Stark only allied himself with her because he wanted to live forever like her and thought she'd be able to teach him how, that would also be seen as a dark thing to his people.
yeah I guess, I just don't like the tired trope of creation gone out of control. I'd prefer them just being an always existing race with their own society
Summer=Restful
Beneath the sea=Death
Patchface has been through death and knows there's no more struggle in the afterlife. "Under the sea, no one wears hats" is him saying that in death we're all equal, instead of some wearing crowns and others wearing hats with bells on.
now that grrm has confirmed that hob/max is looking to adapt the 10000 ships of nymeria and the 9 voyages of the sea snake in an animated form, i would love for them to also start adapting some of his 1000 worlds books in a mixture of animation and live action spread across miniseries, series or feature length movies
suppose this "grrmverse" as it were is made somehow distinct from the "gotverse", so the gotverse will have got, hotd, dunk and egg, robert's rebellion if ever adapted and other stories related to westeros
in grrmverse, explore stories not directly related to westeros, so nymeria and the sea snake, but also the below:
live action film- and seven times never kill man, a song for lya, the way of the cross and the dragon
animation film- sand kings, in the house of the worm
animation miniseries - bitterblooms, windhaven
yeah, there are a lot of adaptable story embryos in westeros, just have to write all the details around it, so balerion's last trip to valyria, or something like jaeherys 1's reign where he has like 13 kids or so and make it like a socialite setting / commentary especially given the scandalous nature of some of the kids, i personally dont think these would be good ideas, but in the hands of someone capable and with vision, who knows
im gonna have to reread the books one of these days to comb for theories and clues but damn I hate Sansa and Dany chapters so much but Im sure they allude to alot of nuggets as well.
Stored grain
Live pigs and chicken for meat
Live cows and goats for milk and cheese
Bee hives for honey
Preserved fruits and veggies in jars
What else do you need?
They're not gonna be able to store much in there. Certainly not for a decade. And all those flat roofs are going to collapse at the first heavy snowfall. Not only that, but the key theme of Game of Thrones was that no one got around to storing anything before the war kicked off, killed all the farmers and burned their farms. No one was able to store jack shit and was guaranteed to all starve and freeze especially if they had to take in the masses from the other towns.
winterfell is built on a hotspring and they pipe it throughout the castle to keep it warm. the snow won't last on its roof
also at no point does anything other than the neck and the coast really experience the war so your second point is horseshit
moron
quads wasted on a moron
>And all those flat roofs are going to collapse at the first heavy snowfall
There are no flat roofs in this picture
Stupid morons.
They're eating fat cooked preserves and tons of milk/yogurt. Fermented dairy. Think medieval Greenland or Iceland.
You’re the moron, it’s clearly inspired by Scotland
Yeah, but in terms of climate it's more like the far Northern Islands and Iceland.
Ale/wine/Beer
>Stored grain
I think OP's point is that there are no FARMS around Winterfell.
grain is gathered as tax from the houses serving under house stark
In a medieval society, farms = warriors and without farms itself, the Starks at Winterfell would have never been strong enough to tax anybody.
The ancient Starks were in cahoots with white walkers which gave them power to rule the grainers
you're confusing seigneurialism with feudalism.
they aren't the samething at all.
also you're a moron, as substinence farming at a local level wasn't practiced by so-called capital cities anywhere near the medieval age.
This is peak comfy.
This needs to be represented in Medieval/Fantasy media more often.
Although most castles were surrounded by farmland, some weren't. Winterfell could have been built on some strategic highland that wouldn't support local soil farming, but would instead have sheep or cattle that could be traded with agrarian areas.
You can’t really take the shows word for it since D&D have been fricking useless from the start, George just took the first team to offer him generational wealth and knew RLJ.
"muh farms right up to the city walls" is an example of peak midwittism.
What started out as legitimate criticism of particular examples gets parroted without any thought for context.
The better criticism of Westeros is the complete lack of actual cities and towns. As I understand there is Lannisport, Hightower and King's Landing. Everything else shown is a fort or a castle.
Europe had hundreds of cities with at least 10 thousand people and dozens with 100 thousand living in them during the Medieval period.
NONE of that is seen or even implied in the TV show.
As I understand, in the books all the major castles like Winterfell are much larger and basically have a city around them.
>As I understand, in the books all the major castles like Winterfell are much larger and basically have a city around them.
Winterfell is not only big but they've also got Winter Town, which is a sprawling town outside the walls that commoners live in during Winter. In summer only a small part of it is lived in because the commoners are spread out tending to farms and chopping woods etc, but once winter arrives they gather in Winter Town to have access to the food and wood stored in Winterfell.
I fricking hate Dungeons and Dragons
that guy is carrying a hoe to do farmwork moron
The show is bad.
https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Winter_town
pre-show drawings are so kino makes me think of the original M&B mod
>grain disintegrates if you move it more than a few hundred feet
What do the cattle eat?
stored grain
>Bee hives for honey
in sub-arctic conditions? have you ever been outside a city? bees are net consumers of calories once temperatures drop below about 50F.
capons and lampreys
The books really made me crave capon. Now one of my bucket list items is to find some place that castrates roosters so I can try some.
The correct answer is "ass", anon.
can't remember if it's mentioned in the show, but they also have greenhouses to grow vegetables year round
Each other
pease porridge
they store a frickton of provisions and invite commonfolk in during the winters
also bear in mind on planetos summer can last a literal generation
Okay? Winters still last 5+ years and they only had primitive preserving techniques
>Winters still last 5+ years
>they only had primitive preserving techniques
>Winters still last 5+ years
>Winters still last 5+ years
>Winters still last 5+ years
i dunno -40C sounds pretty advanced
pemmican has a shelf life of decades and requires no preservation
one of the biggest worldbuilding flaws I think is there's no additional infrastructure for storing of food or it's not treated as a much bigger deal. The Riverlands was almost completely devasted in the war on the cusp of winter the people don't have food now let alone for years of possible winter
how can anybody possible store enough food for years and years of winter where you're producing nothing outside of hunting which would increasingly become lean
Wouldn't that just mean tue population would grow to an insane and unsustainable degree in the warm periods and brutally collapse when it gets cold?
Wow you just figured out a plot point in the book
Congrats!
Point is, storing food for the winter wouldn't be remotely possible without population control, and you need population to produce food.
There are plenty of stories in universe of people having to cannibalize each other in past winters or them having massive population dips. Again, you just figured out a plot point! Good job!
>a civilisation lasted thousands of years having to eat each other every generation or so
Also this isn't plot
>>a civilisation lasted thousands of years having to eat each other every generation or so
But enough about China.
China was constantly invaded by foreigners who set up new governments, not one contiguous thing
>40,000 people eaten
>decisive chinese victory
>a civilisation lasted thousands of years
No it didn't, actually. The people currently alive just think it lasted thousands of years because every winter they'd lose 90% of the population and so the tales passed down through generations were fricked because even kings would starve or freeze some winters. It was only when writing was introduced that they tried to make sense of the tales passed down and they inflated the years by huge amounts to make things make sense.
>Northos
>Southos
>Eastos
>Westos
>Planetos
yes
>Hamos
Fat Frickos
Finishos theos Bookos Fatos Frickos
>Galactus
>Japanos
You can buy food from the Reach and Essos during the winter in this world. Jon Snow even takes out a loan from a Braavosi banker to pay for supplies for the Night's Watch in the book.
>in the book.
yo this homie reads LMFAO
You are so fricking white. Eat some vitamin D.
How is that one white? White people actually read books. I’ve never met a black person who finished a book.
t. Black person
only at millergrove XD
watch your mouth i'll give you the only D you crave right up your shitc**t
>watch your mouth
White person detected.
do non-whites unironically post here?
kys
Ew why would want to interact with anything BUT a white person? Way too many of you savages around these days it’s boring.
no homie has ever read a book thats why they dum
probably have teams of hunters who go get big game, teams of gatherers who go south to where the land is more farmable. it wasnt super snowy at the beginning right? cuz like half the show is every character saying winter is cumming. so maybe at the start of the show the weather was more amenable to farming close to winterfell
Winters gonna make me cum frfr
ARE POTATOES NATIVE TO WESTEROS???!!??!!??
>ARE POTATOES NATIVE TO WESTEROS???!!??!!??
There's no mention of potatoes in ASOIAF so apparently they don't have them, but none of the Earth products that are mentioned in the book, (humans, horses, turnips, etc) are native to Planetos, as the planet isn't Earth and thus was colonized from Earth and as we currently don't have the capability for interstellar travel, the events in the book are from our future.
Shut up Preston.
why build the wall curved around the woods when they could just build it straight to the other city wall using less materials and have more defended space?
Originally the forest was larger but as it grew smaller the wall also shrunk. It was a metaphor for deforestation.
It's nuke launch pad camouflaged as forest.
Possible the grove was walled separately while the town/keep was smaller and the outer wall of the city didn't connect until later.
What is the safest thing to be in this world if you don’t want to die young? A tavern keep?
Maester probably.
>drinks mercury
>dies
>be maester
>meet ironborn
>taken as a sex slave
>drown
Odds are pretty slim, though. Maester is good call.
You would want to be a cool dude who is chill, mostly. Perhaps a based chad that is epic, even.
smallfolk are killed all the time for any and everything. A tavern keep can be killed by a wandering brigand just because he's drunk or in a bad mood. So it depends where you're growing up and also what season. More kids/teens lived to adulthood during the long summer.
>Be farmer
>Some fookin sea Black folk come in hell themselves to your shit and "buy" your kids off you to burn and pass off as other dead kids
>Be butcher
>The fricking King comes through town
>Your son is asked to play by a lords gal and it ends with the hound slaughtering your son for playing with the pussy prince too hard
>Be other farmer
>Little girl and her scarred dad need place to stay
>They rob you
>You and your daughter starve to death that winter
>Be tavern keeper
>Somehow the king and some lords get wrapped up on a child murder(the butchers boy)
>Your business gets cleared out and used as an impromptu court room
>It was the weekend and supposed to be one of your busiest nights
>Lose a good couple wages pay worth of customers
>Be other tavern keeper
>Your kids died cause they just fricking do in this undervisrse
>Some band of scum comes through
>Fat kid eats so much you have to take him as an indentured servant to pay off the debt he tallied up emptying your food reserves
There is no safety in this universe at all.
Forgot
>Fat kid keeps making the bread in shapes of shit like wolves and birds
>What is the safest thing to be in this world if you don’t want to die young?
Black.
except for the fact that summer islanders are taken as slaves near constantly and have literally no concept of warfare
That's Naath and they aren't really black.
right, my bad. I think however, that were the others to win the war for the dawn eventually the entire planet would become an ice world so no where is truly safe
They’re the Ethiopian kind of black. Light skin black.
Go to Asshai and learn magic. There’s barely anyone there. No kids, no animals, and probably very little crime too.
“Sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”
Imagine being a magic user in this world LOL
>be hedge wizard, calling your silly tricks and sleight of hand “magic” like an idiot
>be woods witch, calling your herbal tea and midwifery “magic” like an idiot
>be maester, studying rare arcane lore that will amount to fricking nothing
>be alchemist, drinking mercury like a crazy person, claiming it does wonders
>be pyromancer, making green shit that can barely be handled without exploding
>be poisoner, poisoning people like a cowardly and conniving woman
>be warlock, sipping LSD like a hippy, thinking it’s real mystical insight
>be red priest, burning your retina like an idiot, for maaaaybe a lousy vision
>be dreamer, get dreams that want to hurt you or even kill you (or cripple you)
>be skinchanger, hoping your bear or mountain lion won’t eat your face
>be greenseer, crippling yourself and attaching your body to a creepy tree
>be crannogman, “breathing” mud like a frog and looking malnourished af
>be maegi, pray to the great shepherd you won’t be raped by horse men
A common theme with magic is that “these people are idiots”
When it comes to “magic” (“science” that isn’t truly science), one likely has to dumb themselves down, or at the very least entertain the arcane. It is irresponsible.
Even the most wizardly/sagely of past geniuses and brilliant minds were lacing their limited, lacking understanding (for the time) with the arrogance of the imagination. Why not?
Archmaester Marwyn comes across as an insane learned man, no different from historical physicians like Paracelsus—the original coomer—who thought cooming into a chicken egg would produce a slave creation: the Homunculus. It stuck.
>the modern wizard is just the mad scientist
kek
“Sweet, man-made horrors beyond my comprehension”
>no different from historical physicians like Paracelsus—the original coomer—who thought cooming into a chicken egg would produce a slave creation: the Homunculus
I had to look this up.
‘That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"[1]], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.’[2]:328–329
What the frick did I just read?
>highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb
Imagine the smell
>all these modern 'science' enjoyers who think they can discount it without replicating it
People really need to understand that smart *and* stupid go hand-in-hand together like peanut butter and jam.
When you're smarter than your peers it is really easy to end up thinking you know everything.
you dont burn your retina by looking into fires
Why don’t red priests stare into the sun? It’s a giant ball of fire.
actually, it's a miasma of incandescent plasma sustained by nuclear fusion
its not fire at all
But do they know that? Don’t be stupid. All red priests should be staring at the sun.
I reckon they would stop when the desired effect does not occur
They would blind themselves and walk off the edges of their red temples to their deaths.
Literally what's wrong with being an alchemist making wildfire for a living?
If you make a single bad batch you die.
>"I trust that your guild brothers are not engaging in any unseemly haste, Wisdom. We do not want ten thousand jars of defective wildfire, nor even one . . . and we most certainly do not want any mishaps."
>"There will be no mishaps, my lord Hand. The substance is prepared by trained acolytes in a series of bare stone cells, and each jar is removed by an apprentice and carried down here the instant it is ready. Above each work cell is a room filled entirely with sand. A protective spell has been laid on the floors, hmmm, most powerful. Any fire in the cell below causes the floors to fall away, and the sand smothers the blaze at once."
>"Not to mention the careless acolyte."
except Red Priests can casually resurrect people
>casually
Are you moronic?
Based on prevalence of last name: Smith
probably a skilled tradesmen especially a Smith. Valuable enough and not really worth killing
Fish, easy
u need ur vegetables breh for ur vitamins bruh
I like the covered hoardings on the round towers but why don't they have any on the square towers. Or the walls for that matter, they live in the north it'd be even more important since they wouldn't want their wall walks iced over
also why would they have that patch of trees outside the walls that close, that just creates a dead zone for the enemy to approach from
Is this real lololololololol, dumber than a video game
>What do they eat?
P U S S Y
Yes hello I'll have one pussy feast please.
bags of sand
are you kidding?
pretty sure the backstory is that a wandering trader by the name of Fray Bentos travels through winterfell selling his wares.
They built glass enclosed gardens heated by an underground hot spring to grow crops in the winter
Ass
Whatever they want
Where do all the peasants live? This makes Skyrim's towns look like Tokyo
Peasants are defined by the fact that they live spread out on the land in small settlements
>all castle no town
This isn’t even book accurate
>gods wood is it’s own walled area as big as the castle
Wuuut?
It’s even funnier imaging how this castle is supposed to be defended
The castle itself houses the family, servants and some guards, then there’s a few houses outside, the high seat of the north is defended by what, 50-100 people at best?
If you look at maps of europe you'll not that all major cities are on the coast and next to a river
Water was extremely important for sustaining a population. It has food as you can fish, use the water to grow crops, and its the cheapest way to move stuff and humans around to trade via boats.
Then in every nordic country where theres 4 seasons the capital is in the south because warmer weather allows more food production and less resources to keep masses of people alive.
I don't think grrm did a lot of thinking on the Geographic side of things.
I’m going to be honest, given that his books are all POV or written from a biased maester (or septon, or fool, etc).
The inconsistency of the world adds to the air of mystery in the world. People are sharing conflicting accounts all the time. In the world book, the maester claims the Seasnake never sailed as far as Asshai. In F&B, it is claimed he did sail to Asshai.
The Asshai’i believe Casterly Rock is a palace made entirely out of gold, ruled by a lion. People are exaggerating up the ass. Misinterpretations are everywhere.
BUT THE WALL IS REEEEAAAAAAAAL
Winterfell is located where it is because it has hot springs, which not only keep the entire castle warm even in winter, they also power greenhouses for food production.
But the North in general is very sparsely populated for its size. Barely anyone lives up there, it's just a giant mostly empty landmass.
The other capital cities are located at the coast or at major rivers. The North is a weird outlier with different rules.
winterfell is pretty special in that it was built in the literal spot WHERE WINTER FELL, aka the great other was defeated by azor ahai, during the last long night
below it is the only hot spring in the region, and probably a magical one at that
yeah irl hot springs exist due to movement of tectonic plates
like how japan and iceland have them because they're near edges of the plates but there isn't any in northern europe
irl there isn't literal magic and dragons bro
sure
arguing that planetos doesn't act like earth is moronic. there are geographic features of westeros that were literally shaped by magic. the stepstones were destroyed by children of the forest magic, the neck was nearly destroyed as well by the same magic but they whiffed it and now its just a swamp instead
there is a fire god that brings his devout back to life routinely
there are dragons and ice zombies
but a hotspring existing magically? wtf bro that's all tectonic plates n shit bro
saying something is fantasy and therefore everything goes is moronic
Sometimes the author just sucks and cba make research that would make the book better.
Otherwise you can imagine a monkey god shitting his ass out in a middle of a frozen wasteland and people make a big city there because the manure keeps things warm. Its fantasy after all, who cares.
I keep thinking that the ‘hammer of the waters’ is a regionally determined thing, since the Arm sunk/broke successfully, while the Neck was only partially flooded. The Wall can be seen as a third magic attempt of some sort. Perhaps. Assuming it was built to keep men away/out.
It was a botched spell. The tower of the children is broken. They probably got hit by a lightning bolt mid-ritual.
The magic of the Old Gods is fueled by blood sacrifices (like most magic in this world). They probably didn't have enough people to sacrifice to pull off a second hammer successfully.
>The magic of the Old Gods is fueled by blood sacrifices
What about skin changing and green dreaming? People are born with that.
Horrible interracial interactions had to occur in the deep past for such to be born the way they are.
The Starks are only skinchangers because they slew a past ‘warg king’ and raped his daughters. Yeah…
It is implied that the Starks of old were horrible rulers. Or just bad people.
The Night’s Watch also makes “sacrifices”, in the form of oaths. Their lives are the Wall’s now.
Yeah that’s probably the magic in the wall that keeps getting referenced
All starks have it dormant but they need an animal companion to awaken it, Bloodraven sent the Direwolf because he wanted to awaken it in them, if it was specifically just for bran and the others were a cost of doing business or if he had machinations for the others is unclear, then you have Jon being targeted by the others for some reason I dunno if they care if he’s a warg or not. And it’s hard to say if Bloodraven and the others are allied since he undermines them from time to time but the trees are obviously very very mischievous
i think its pretty clear the old gods are opposed to the others given the prior conflicts between the others and the children in millennia past
Probably but I think it’s too on the nose
That’s part of the pact, it’s why Ned always cleans off ice at his weirwood so it can drink the blood. In exchange the weirwoods give warg/seer powers. But then on top of that starks have ancient covenants with the old gods/others
This seems like bullshit, because the Starks haven't had a warg in centuries and then suddenly get potentially 5 at once
Perhaps the death/sacrifice of such a fruitful beast (dire wolf) against another majestic creature (the stag) kickstarted their genes. The beginning of the book is extremely symbolic of events to come.
George likes doing these complicated family trees, it's usually not as simple as "Starks are all wargs".
It's more likely a bunch of magical family lines happened to come together in that particular Stark generation. The Tully line from Catlyn was probably involved too in some way too. Old God magic is also found in the Riverlands.
Bloodraven, one of the most powerful individuals in the series, was created from the union of the Old God Blackwood family and the Targaryans.
>The Tully line from Catlyn was probably involved too in some way too. Old God magic is also found in the Riverlands.
feel like there is some reason that Catelyn's mother was a Whent as it so far hasn't really came up to have any plot purpose. there could be some hint that the families that held Harrenhal did actually intermarry and she was a descendant of Aemond Targaryen and that Strong bastard girl
>it’s why Ned always cleans off ice at his weirwood so it can drink the blood
a beautiful ritual regardless, to be sure
Yeah telepathy seems to be something you are just born with based on genetics. But we also see Bran being strengthened by being fed blood paste made from another Greenseer.
And at least with the Valyrians it seems like the telepathic bond they have with dragons was created via blood magic and can also be strengthened via blood sacrifices.
The origin of the Northern/Children telepathy isn't really explored at all, so hard to say how it was originally created in the first generation.
>The origin of the Northern/Children telepathy isn't really explored at all, so hard to say how it was originally created in the first generation.
The CotF, not being actual children, likely kidnapped humans to breed with, or just abuse sexually.
>Valyrians
Some Targaryens are born sickly until they bond to a dragon, denoting a sort of symbiosis.
>Some Targaryens are born sickly until they bond to a dragon, denoting a sort of symbiosis.
Both Dragons and Dragon-Riders appear to be genetically engineered chimeras.
Dragons were created via blood magic from the highly magical Firewyrms
and the non-magical Wyverns of Sothoryos.
Valyrian Dragon Riders on the other hand gained their telepathic bond with dragons by being actually part dragon.
Septon Barth talks about how Valyrians were masters at creating chimeras. So this kind of magical weapon development kind of makes sense. Though dragons predate the Valyrian empire. They probably learned about the mechanics from the Empire of the Dawn and either studied existing dragons or straight up re-created them.
The worms (wyrms?) inside Aerea also had ‘faces’ and ‘hands’ and horrible voices, which may imply or attest to a sort of ‘Xenomorph logic’, in that they acquire the traits of their host.
The bond between rider and dragon may be a leftover of that. It’s also worth noting that dragon eggs stay dormant in the same manner as some parasitic worm eggs. Curious, no?
I don’t actually think dragons are entirely reptilian. Wyrms might be closer to worms.
>The worms (wyrms?) inside Aerea also had ‘faces’ and ‘hands’ and horrible voices, which may imply or attest to a sort of ‘Xenomorph logic’, in that they acquire the traits of their host.
Yeah either they adapt to their hosts and that is the most basic building block of how to create a chimera (I like that theory), or alternatively the Wyrms found in Aerea were just escaped Chimera experiments that got out of their cages after the Fall of Valyria and somehow flourished in the boiling ruins.
i always tell anons to read martins other books in the 1000 worlds to get more insight, eg, in the house of the worm, the ecological engineering corps create giant worms to battle their long time foes, the githyanki/harrangan; by the time the story starts, the world and the sun is dying, the human population has regressed to a mix between stone age and medieval age and everyone has forgotten their ancestors civilisation, eccept in oblique hints
The valyrians of old were simply sheepherders, imo, and somehow were taken in and experimented upon by the eeg to form a human worm hybrid, the valyrians of the 14 flames are a cargo cult of this original experimentation and try to unsuccessfully create chimeras every so often
are the otthers aliens from an ice moon then or what
no, they are synthetic beings created by the hrangan/githyanki, that get activated during certain events, for that matter, only the cotf are natives to westeros, the others are genetic abominations created by experimenting on them
You know the red comet just before dany's dragon eggs hatch? well in his tuf voyaging, grrm has a story of a defunct eeg spacecraft orbiting in space around the planets orbit, when it becomes visible in the horizon, observed as a sort of a comet, the planet natives, the hrangan/githyanki created beings suffer massive biological issues, mysterious illness, stillbirth, other malaise which greatly reduces their population once every some generations
I don’t think the Valyrians were the first to create dragons, but I do think they were the best at breeding them.
they certainly weren't, since goat herders discovered them in the 14 flames before the freehold even existed
That always struck me as a kind of mythological story that doesn't have much to do with the actual history. Always seemed silly that some goat herders would figure out the secrets of dragons randomly. It's more likely that Valyria was some kind of offshoot of the Empire of the Dawn.
Dragons definitely already existed prior to Valyria. The Empire of the Dawn at least had dragons around, though maybe not necessarily dragon riders. Their ancient castles were shaped by dragon fire.
To be fair the hot springs are fuelled by dragons
Firewyrms you mean
Ye
Imagine a medieval man seeing a BMW, screaming “sorcery! wizardry!” in utter fricking amazement, to which the driver responds with “nahhh it’s just a thing”, then drives off like nothing just happened.
>“nahhh it’s just a thing”
>drives off like nothing just happened
>hits a rock in the field, puncturing the aluminum oil pan
>Cuts off a carriage while merging on to the road(didn't indicate)
>spins out on the dirt path and careens into a tree
Ultimate Driving Machine™
>bimmer driving anywhere pre paved roads
If he so much as touched the throttle it would be spinning its wheels and spraying the village down with wet mud
You're so fricking wrong.
Magic in real life is literally just a point of view. The magic in asoiaf (and lotr) is no different.
oh so when that lady gave birth to a Stannis apparition to kill his brother it was basically like when a magician cuts himself in half
cool
Those hot springs are also filled with monkey shit because monkeys keep using them.
you can have intraplate hot springs thoughbeit
every hot spring in Australia is one
>historically castles were small on purpose and typically had garrison of only few hundred, the largest castle ever built, a crusader castle had a garrison of a thousand
>this is because, the castle allowed bottleneck, thus 100 men could defend against 1,000 and hold out
>in Martin's world all castles are gigantic and require a garrison of thousands, making them completely unsustainable
Is the author a hack? The more I think of his worldbuilding more I hate it
planetos has a much larger population than real life
the kingdoms of westeros have a combined feudal levy of well over a million
all of europe couldn't have managed this under the same system by a factor of two or more
Sorry George, the scale-up excuse doesn't work.
>all of europe couldn't have managed this under the same system by a factor of two or more
why not
Because unlike in Planetos the farms don't till themselves
your argument is moronic, it was in the medieval era that small professional armies were recognized as vastly superior to any levy, destroying entire peasant armies with minimal to zero casualties even when outnumbered 20 to 1.
Paris alone had a population of at least 250k in 1300, and that's with generational famine, war, and plague.
Westeros is more like 800AD with plate mail
250k is nothing. king's landing and old town double that, lannisport probably matches it
a 1 million peasant levy doesn't beat an army of 50k man at arms in any scenario beyond the most ridiculous, so the point is moot.
ok but westeros has both thoughbeit
Mobilizing 1 million peasants would be a moronic thing to do. That's a million guys not doing agricultural labour to sustain the entire society. The modern equivalent would be converting every farm tractor in the country into a tank and sending them to the front.
>destroying entire peasant armies with minimal to zero casualties even when outnumbered 20 to 1
post an example
You won't find them on Wikipedia because they aren't considered battles.
But for instance any of the peasant revolts in Normandy during English occupation in the 100 years war, where thousands of peasants were regularly massacred by small garrisons of 200-300 men.
In 1381 angry English peasants stormed the Tower of London, the stronghold of the King, and controlled the whole city for some time
Peasants already in a city can and have successfully attacked a city's garrison or gotten them to surrender the garrison countless times, doesn't mean anything when it comes to a battle though.
Regular castles build at the time of the main plot are small in that world too. In the hedgeknight series we see a bunch of small castles and towers.
The seats of the big houses were build thousands of years ago and not for battles against humans. Their strategic value isn't really that great in actual warfare, except as (almost) impenetrable retreats as a last resort.
MWWAAHH THE /got/ THREAD
Why don’t wargs just operate as telephones? Bloodraven warged mornonts crow to tell Jon about fire so they can obviously do it at a distance
It's a skill issue
didnt you read george rr martin’s 10 page long description of the twenty course meal served at the winterfell feast?
Pussy fluids, breast milk and sperm.
Yellow snow.
Great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves, savory duck, peppered boar, goose, skewers of pigeon and capon, beef-and-barley stew, cold fruit soup.
Twenty casks of fish from White Harbor packed in salt and seaweed; whitefish and winkles, crabs and mussels, clams, herring, cod, salmon, lobster and lampreys. Black bread and honeycakes and oaten biscuits, turnips and peas and beets, beans and squash and huge red onions, baked apples and berry tarts and pears poached in strongwine.
Black stout and yellow beer and wines red and gold and purple, brought up from the warm south on fat-bottomed ships and aged in his deep cellars. Cod cakes and winter squash, hills of neeps and great round wheels of cheese, on smoking slabs of mutton and beef ribs charred almost black, and lastly on three great wedding pies, as wide across as wagon wheels, their flaky crusts stuffed to bursting with carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork swimming in a savory brown gravy.
I enjoy GRRM's lengthy descriptions of food brings a certain comfiness to the series
Nagga was a wyrm and the fourteen flames were actually a reservoir of subterranean water systems.
The Doom wasn’t a volcanic eruption, it was a landmass sinking in on itself. The smoking sea was always there.
Thumbnail looks like Legos.
What do they eat?
rotten fish, vodka and cigarettes
vodka and mämmi
ur moms minge
Human cum.
>Its another episode of "Background lore is 1000 more interesting than what is in focus"
Maybe the Others are the original inhabitants of the world.
The length and strengths of summers seems to be linked to fire magic somehow, so maybe winter is the normal state for the world and the summers are a tool of alien colonization.
nah theyre stinky dead guys who are mean
Nah, even in the books there's clear setups for The Children having created them when you read the different stories told of the far past, enough that I guessed it before the show ever got anywhere near that far. The First Men were pushing their shit in by outbreeding them(even after they broke the land bridge connecting Westeros and Essos) and having more brute strength, and so they created ice beings to fight them, making their new weapon incredibly vulnerable to dragonglass because that was The Children's choice of weapon. But then the Others learnt how to raise the dead Men and the dead were invulnerable to dragonglass, so The Children now had to join forces with the First Men to drive back their own rebellious creation.
That's why the Night's Watch have old records of a treaty saying The Children must deliver a set amount of dragonglass to the Watch each year, it's war reparations to arm them against the remaining Others and to make sure the Children can't do the same thing again because now both of them have the same weapons. It was after this treaty was made that the First Men started worshipping the Old Gods with The Children and swore to leave the woods to them and never cut down another Weirwood. This treaty held until the Andals arrived and cut all the Weirwoods down in their religious fervour, severing the people's connection to the Weirnet and so they could no longer access the memories stored there, causing them to forget their history and have it supplanted by the Andal stories about heroic knights and grand magical castles built by Bran The Builder.
D&D just fricked all of that up by being too lazy to differentiate between Others and Wights, making both of them die from one dragonglass stab. The Children should have been able to deal with them all on their own if that was the case.
Well we have no evidence in the books to say wether dragonglass kills wights or not.
All you gotta do is read between the lines and go by the time Tarly stabbed a wight and the dragonglass broke. If all they had to do is wear armour then the Others wouldn't be described as all ice.
its really boring if they just turn out to be le creation that went out of control!
maybe they are but I prefer it being something about interwedding with Starks. Which seems not too long of a shot considering how interested they seem to be in Jon (in the books)
>maybe they are but I prefer it being something about interwedding with Starks.
There's no reason that couldn't also have happened later, though? The Others are clearly sentient, which is why they rebelled. More likely though that story is based on a situation like Coldhands though. Where a warg died but managed to flee before death and then managed to warg back into their own body, just like Jon will most likely end up being resurrected. Creating a sentient wight that was somehow pretty enough that a Stark wanted to marry her, horrifying those around him. Maybe the Stark only allied himself with her because he wanted to live forever like her and thought she'd be able to teach him how, that would also be seen as a dark thing to his people.
yeah I guess, I just don't like the tired trope of creation gone out of control. I'd prefer them just being an always existing race with their own society
Summer=Restful
Beneath the sea=Death
Patchface has been through death and knows there's no more struggle in the afterlife. "Under the sea, no one wears hats" is him saying that in death we're all equal, instead of some wearing crowns and others wearing hats with bells on.
They just stockpile taxes for the 20 years long winters. Really good and realistic writing.
>nooo you can't just use long summers to store up lots of food to get ten percent of your population through winter, that's not realistic enough!!!
now that grrm has confirmed that hob/max is looking to adapt the 10000 ships of nymeria and the 9 voyages of the sea snake in an animated form, i would love for them to also start adapting some of his 1000 worlds books in a mixture of animation and live action spread across miniseries, series or feature length movies
suppose this "grrmverse" as it were is made somehow distinct from the "gotverse", so the gotverse will have got, hotd, dunk and egg, robert's rebellion if ever adapted and other stories related to westeros
in grrmverse, explore stories not directly related to westeros, so nymeria and the sea snake, but also the below:
live action film- and seven times never kill man, a song for lya, the way of the cross and the dragon
animation film- sand kings, in the house of the worm
animation miniseries - bitterblooms, windhaven
I just want to see Balerion and prime Bobby B
would be pretty cool to see aelea too
yeah, there are a lot of adaptable story embryos in westeros, just have to write all the details around it, so balerion's last trip to valyria, or something like jaeherys 1's reign where he has like 13 kids or so and make it like a socialite setting / commentary especially given the scandalous nature of some of the kids, i personally dont think these would be good ideas, but in the hands of someone capable and with vision, who knows
they have a gre- I mean glasshouse
How Winterfell is described in the books
I live there.
that's one fricking hard core moat
why do you need so many towers
im gonna have to reread the books one of these days to comb for theories and clues but damn I hate Sansa and Dany chapters so much but Im sure they allude to alot of nuggets as well.
sooooooooooo many nuggets
I miss /got/ threads so much it's unreal...
Frick D&D for making the 2nd half of the show unbearably bad.
Now they are on to ruin Three Body Problem.
They were so bad they made those threads amazing though
Salt
Pussy
each other
Preserved meats.