Whats the point of it? They boast how the attacker would need a million troops to conquer it. Why not just leave a small garrison and move away while they starve on that rock? Not like the castle holds any strategic significance like the fricking Twins bridge at least.
assuming you somehow had a force that could contest theirs they'd see you coming and burn all the crops and poison all wells in the entire area and just wait for you to starve while feeding themselves off the castle's granary. plus all their bannermen would do the same except they'd harry you the entire time too
Why would an attacker ever bother? The land itself is just a bunch of empty mountains and hills populated exclusively by moronic bandit tribes. There's no resources worth exploiting, not even basic farm land. And it's off the beaten path controlling no important water or land route nor is it positioned to contest one. It's absolutely worthless, so worthless it's baffling why anyone would or could live there in the first place let alone generate the wealth to build a castle there. But of course this is a poorly thought out fantasy world so it doesn't have to make sense.
It's described in detail, The Vale's rich black earth is the best quality farmland in the Vale.
That's why it's called Mountain and Vale, it isn't all mountain you moron.
https://i.imgur.com/AivLVzR.jpg
What do they eat?
Food that is brought up on a pulley elevator and stored in the uppermost castle.
Whats the point of it? They boast how the attacker would need a million troops to conquer it. Why not just leave a small garrison and move away while they starve on that rock? Not like the castle holds any strategic significance like the fricking Twins bridge at least.
The Eyrie is also the top of a mountain above three lower castles of varying levels of fortification, with the uppermost ones being crude wooden forts.
But at the steep elevation anyone that wanted to take them would be crushed by rocks thrown from the ramparts or shot to pieces because the only way to approach is a tiny fricking path carved into the rock.
So basically you just have to take the waycastle at the bottom (Stone) and then let Snow, Sky, and the Eyrie above them starve to death. It might take literally years if the castle was well stocked, but it's doable.
Plenty of birds it looks like; they probably have men stock up the food stored with grain from the local towns and salted pork / fowl. You think how this mother fricker loves to write 5+ pages about food he would have described something of the like; but alas, there was never a feast in the Eyrie.
In the books, the Lannister gold mines are still going strong - thousands and thousands of years of mining and they've not even exhausted any of their gold mines. It's only a show thing that the Lannister mines were no longer operating.
So much for the guy who asked about Aragorn's tax policy
I never understood why people took that statement as anything serious. Martin never ever explained how the Seven Kingdoms tax system works.
>How did the lannister mining not cause the inflation in their realm?
I presume they didn't constantly shit out gold all over the place but regulated the flow of gold? I don't know honestly, I suck at economy. The whole setting is fricking moronic when you think about it. If they have winters that last years, how the frick does any wildlife manage to survive? Or many plants that are not suited for such a climate?
How did the lannister mining not cause the inflation in their realm? did the hack ever explain?
Example: 1000 tons of total dug up gold exist in the world or GoT. The lannister mines dig up 100 tons this year. The total amount of gold is now 1100. Thats 10% inflation. Next year, the lannisters dig up another 100 tons. now that's less than 10% inflation because you added a fixed amount instead of 10% of 1100.
Over time this inflation approaches basically zero, as opposed to printing paper money, where not only the yearly increase of money supply stacks (as in 10% of 1000 is 100, but 10% of 1100 is 110), but the print speed is arbitrarily set by central bankers. Now matter how many slaves you send into a mine shaft or how many whips you swing, they won't make you 200 tons of gold just because you want more this year.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You're applying modern macroeconomic nonsense like rational consumers and perfect information, which are horseshit now, to a society at a state of advancement centuries before earth societies ever invented the 'science' of economics as something discrete from a sidenote in politics
Furthermore you have no idea what the gold supply is in westeros, how much they mine & sell, westeros' pop growth rate, if they ship some to essos for other valuables, and a million other factors
2 years ago
Anonymous
>modern macroeconomic nonsense >before earth societies ever invented the 'science' of economics
what are you talking about? You don't need to be a physicist if you're rubbing sticks together to make fire.
It doesn't even have anything to do with economics in the grand scheme of things. The point I was making is that while on a technical level gold supply is inflated everyday by people digging it up, it's not the same as fiat currency.
Now there are two exceptions that WOULD make the lannisters gold act in a similar fashion to a money printer: >1. a magical gold mine that gets bigger and easier to mine the longer you mine it >2. the lannisters practice widespread coin clipping and are also producing miscalibrated scales and weights to keep up the ruse, because it's typically the death penalty if you get found out
Now any GoT loregay can chime in and mention if that's the case. Option 2 could be a political intrigue fit for the lannisters, but it would be a very risky venture that could eliminate all of their political power.
2 years ago
Anonymous
As someone before said, inflation and modern economics don't work the same in a pre-industrial society. And, even if they do, we have examples of similar situations in real life.
Diamonds, for example, are extremely common. Everyone knows this, and yet they're still highly valued. There are two factors at play,
1: being a heavily desirable luxury like gold and diamonds, demand always far outstrips supply
2: groups control the distribution. The Lannisters might mine 100 tons in a year, but they'll only release 1 or 2. Similar to real diamond companies that mine and produce massive amounts of diamonds, but only ever release a small amount.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Again I don't understand how "inflation" doesn't work in a pre-industrial society. Everyone from the romans throughout medieval societies had problems when their currency was debased, from coin clipping to mixing in lesser metals into coins. The chinese printed the first fiat currency around 1000 AD or so. The Yuan Dynasty literally went Weimar Republic nearly a thousand years before that republic existed. It would be like the lannisters dumping all of their gold at once because they absolutely, positively want to buy warships right fricking now. Which would be a one time thing as opposed to paper money where you can do this literally every day until your country goes up in flames.
The real question is: With what is a gold miner paid, in a society that uses gold not as trinkets or bling but as currency? Like 1kg of gold mined would equal 1000 1g gold coins. (disregard turning mined ore into a pure gold bar and turning that bar into coins for a sec)
2 years ago
Anonymous
A gold miner would be paid in coinage equal to the value of his labor, as determined by the mine owner. A generous owner might be willing to give a miner a portion of his daily productivity, or he might insist on a fixed rate of payment for a days labor; obviously, one will drive more labor engagement than the other but it really comes down to the manager's understanding of the mining firm
The Iron Throne must have had a highly regulated trade policy wherein the annual total value of imported goods and services was precisely fixed to the value of annual gold extraction, thereby ensuring the domestic monetary supply, and by extension prices, was constant
I really wish they'd used Ted Nasmith for LOTR and Hobbit illustrated editions instead of Alan Lee, I just feel like his artstyle just isn't complimentary to Tolkien's works.
Oh man, you haven't seen shit. This shit right here is official "artwork" from The World of Ice and Fire. The dragons are literally copied and pasted from Skyrim. Like not just drawn that way, this is literally a rip of their renders.
I've got this theory about that and the "our blades are sharp" family words and the rest of the Northern houses compared to the Stark words. Like, the Bolton sigil and words are clearly nothing poetic. It's just straight up telling everyone not to frick with them. The southern(or newer) houses has more flowery words that more often are meant to mean something or stand for something, like how the Tully's are about honour and family because the house was only created during the Targ years when a newly founded house would want an impressive motto. Ned picked up this way of thinking about the Stark motto as something wise when he lived in the Eyrie, warning about future dangers and to be prepared or things will inevitably get worse etc. In reality the Starks were brutal men just like all the other Northern houses, who used to style themselves as The Kings of Winter. When the words began it was just them saying "We're coming for you, b***h" and likening themselves to the brutal winters that killed half the population, same as the Boltons are just saying they'll skin you alive if you make an enemy of them and the Karstark words are just saying that their patriarch was a The "sun" of "Winter".
>like how the Tully's are about honour and family because the house was only created during the Targ years when a newly founded house would want an impressive motto.
the tullys are a first man house and are about as old as other first man riverland houses
They only became a Great House with fancy words and shit during the Targ years though, right? They helped overthrow the much older family that ruled the area and so got a huge rise in status and needed fancy words. Probably a bunch of rich fishermen if their sigil is any sign. I realise that the way I wrote it it might have looked like I was saying they arrived with the Targs.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>They only became a Great House with fancy words and shit during the Targ years though, right? They helped overthrow the much older family that ruled the area and so got a huge rise in status and needed fancy words.
maybe? we dont really know when they made up those words, and "lesser" houses have words too so I imagine they made them up when they first got founded >Probably a bunch of rich fishermen if their sigil is any sign.
probably, the Mootons have a similar sigil and they are also rich fishermen >I realise that the way I wrote it it might have looked like I was saying they arrived with the Targs.
I read it as you saying they were made after they rebelled against the Hoares and were given lord paramountship
>pelennor is actual farmland instead of a barren fricking grassland
holy based. you wanna complain about >but what did they eat
start with jackson's gondor
my head cannon is that jackson's gondor is more severely on the decline and the surrounding lands have become desolate as denethor descended into madness
Anon "it's a fantasy setting" doesn't excuse poor worldbuilding
Every setting needs one thing: internal consistency
For example if you establish that your setting has all powerful wizards, people who control the elements themselves, friendly frickhuge giants and what not, then yes, having impossible to build castles makes sense and is pretty cool
However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with, that everything very much depends on manual labor and the average peasant is possibly even worse off than medieval peasants, then no, making impossible buildings is NOT okay
furthermore, the difference between what you posted in your image and what was posted in the images you replied to is incredibly obvious, yours could be accomplished by digging and stacking dirt while the ones you replied to would be impossible to construct even using modern machinery
also your image is not medieval, it's Renaissance, deep into Renaissance, the date it was built is literally in your image (1593) and the reason it's built like that was to resist, by then, state of the art cannons
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with, that everything very much depends on manual labor and the average peasant is possibly even worse off than medieval peasants, then no, making impossible buildings is NOT okay
Are you moronic? ALL the good castles in Westeros are said to have been built by making deals with gods, tricking gods or with the help of giants or Children of the forest. All that means it was fricking magic that did it, before magic faded from the world and they had to make do building new castles and improving on the old ones using regular human manual labour instead of getting some giants to carry frickhuge stones, or Children to do their magic etc.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin
wat. even if you're a showgay moron did you seriously miss the part where the frickhuge wall of ice and stone is woven with spells and constructed by magic?
that is way less impractical than building a whole ass castle on the top of a steep mountain, suck my ass
2 years ago
Anonymous
It's not much more impractical when you've got fricking magic to help you.
2 years ago
Anonymous
NO WAY BRO DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THIS SHIT???
BUILDING ON MOUNTAINS IS IMPOSSIBLE NO WAYYYYYY BRO
2 years ago
Anonymous
>implying these tiny houses are comparable to giant ass castles
2 years ago
Anonymous
Is that a castle on a mountain!!!!
Aaahh!!! I'm going insane!!!
2 years ago
Anonymous
kek he has no response to this one
you won anon
2 years ago
Anonymous
kek he has no response to this one
you won anon
I was sleeping you homosexuals! frick you!
2 years ago
Anonymous
That's a whole ass Buddhist temple, anon. Gotta be at least 80 foot high. How big do you think castles are?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>How big do you think castles are?
To be fair, Martin's castles are really frickhueg even before you get to Harrenhal. They're definitely bigger than the buildings we'd construct on mountains. The man isn't good at gauging distances, which is why he wrote that a dude standing on top of the wall could be shot with an arrow, when he made the wall as high as this building. The things being built are still explained by magic, though.
Don't think I'd like to take that fricker in a siege. What's the play? Boats? Guess you're best starving them out.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Realistically you wouldn't attack it at all, but if you were going to then probably something like a land bridge.
Be ready to take a loooong time though
2 years ago
Anonymous
Ignoring it and keeping the rest of the entire country
2 years ago
Anonymous
its an abbey
2 years ago
Anonymous
Imagining your moms sweaty meaty milf ass going CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP *squish* on my dick ahaha
You say that like there's dozens of these and this is a UN heritage site. Moron
2 years ago
Anonymous
I don't see how that's a good argument from your side. There aren't even a dozen fantastical castles in Westeros and they're all treated like their version of a UN heritage site, having stories about how they were built by magic. And that's if you count the ones like Winterfell where the only really fantastical bit is that they've got plumbing pumping hot springs water through the walls.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The ratio of practical to impractical keeps in Westeros is like 15/1.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with
All those things you mentioned in the previous sentence were true in Martin's world in the past.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with,
Did we read the same books? Because we are talking about a setting that built a giant frick off wall that spans the length of the continent centuries before the story.
>if you establish that your setting has all powerful wizards, people who control the elements themselves, friendly frickhuge giants
ASOIAF has all of that, yeah. >However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with
Wait, what? Did you not read the books?
>fantasy excuses all logic >here let me post a real world example built with technology 400 years past what the fantasy book in question is supposed to possess
There are hints of it being post apocalyptic as a setting, either from a high technology point or a previous high magic level including lovecraft gods like a conan setting.
When I say hints, I mean just hints, shit from the reference material,interviews, and one off lines in books. You'd be best served watching one of those lore channels like alt shift x, since it requires a certain amount of autism to put together.
There's a lot of creepy Lovecraftian stuff in the descriptions for the lands very far from Westeros in The World of Ice and Fire. Either this is to simulate how a medieval historian would write history (the further away from his knowledge the places he writes about are, the more superstitious metaphysical stuff he will imagine about them) or Westeros and Essos are really surrounded by the ruins of previous civilizations that suffered some kind of cataclysm at the hands of dark mysterious forces a long time ago.
>the ruins of previous civilizations that suffered some kind of cataclysm at the hands of dark mysterious forces a long time ago.
Wouldn't it be more likely that in ancient times there were lots of magic and magicians that built wondrous things. Then magic waned, just like it recently did before the books started, and those civilisations fell because they were too reliant on magic. In the hundreds of years of no magic the now magic-less people came up with stories to explain what kind of creature could have created the buildings that their own ancestors built. Just like the people of Westeros has all kinds of fricked up ideas about how long ago things were built, or when things were first created, and castles being built by one mythical builder etc.
Levers, pullies, and decades of work. Why do you think gothic cathedrals built in the 1200s look more impressive than anything today? Shit was built for like 90 straight years
Most of the badass castles like this one were built during the first age, when people had magic or advanced technology. Some castles are even older; the first men found them already built.
The going theory is that Westeros once was far more advanced and also had stable seasons. A massive meteor collision fricked the planet up and also massively peturbed its orbit, which is why the seasons are irregular now. The red comet in book 2 is probably an allusion to this.
I'll never understand the people who try to find a "realistic" reason for the seasons. If the seasons was down to a meteor fricking up the planet's orbit then all the kingdoms in Essos would have to do the exact same stuff that Westeros does, collecting food to survive each winter. They don't, otherwise things like the Dothraki wouldn't exist. It's a Westerosi problem because the Westerosi have Ice Fae living in their northern reaches that magically frick with things to make winters that last decades sometimes. GRRM's plans are to call the final book "A Dream Of Spring" because after everything goes down the Others will be vanquished for good and there'll be hope of a true Spring.
We don't need headcanon because the books already tell us about how magic used to be stronger and then waned to the point where it almost didn't exist, until the time of the books. That magic amply explains all the castles and bigger feats.
Obviously not enough to make it a planetary thing, more like they get some extra cold from being near Westeros while places like The Summer Isles are untouched. If it was due to planetary orbits that force Westeros to get enough food collected to survive for decade-long winters then obviously some horsefrickers like the Dothraki wouldn't survive by just hunkering down in one spot.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I think Martin said only Westeros suffer that much during Winter because it's the only continent that stretch that far North.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Anon that still wouldn't make any sense. If we're talking about a meteor impact fricking up the planet's orbit to the point where you get winters that last for decades sometimes and only a year or two at other times then it wouldn't be located to one part, no matter how northern it is. The whole planet would be equally fricked by the highly irregular orbit.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Though the Citadel has long sought to learn the manner by which it may predict the length and change of seasons, all efforts have been confounded. Septon Barth appeared to argue, in a fragmentary treatise, that the inconstancy of the seasons was a matter of magical art rather than trustworthy knowledge. Maester Nicol’s The Measure of the Days — otherwise a laudable work containing much of use — seems influenced by this argument. Based upon his work on the movement of stars in the firmament, Nicol argues unconvincingly that the seasons might once have been of a regular length, determined solely by the way in which the globe faces the sun in its heavenly course. The notion behind it seems true enough — that the lengthening and shortening of days, if more regular, would have led to more regular seasons — but he could find no evidence that such was ever the case, beyond the most ancient of tales.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I was not the same guy, I wasn't saying that the meteor is correct, I'm aware that Martin has said numerous time that it's a magical explanation (and that's probably tie to the Others, the song of Ice and to the Dragonlords, the song of Fire), I just repeat what Martin said. >[Are the seasons irregular only in Westeros or also in the eastern continent?] >The eastern continent (Essos) is further south than Westeros, and feels the North of the great sweep of the eastern sweep of the eastern lands is a huge ocean, the Shivering Sea. Only Westeros extends to the far north. >–Asshai.com forum chat, July 27, 2008
>Surely, the import of grain from the South alone can’t cover the North’s needs. And, by the way, does it snow in the South during the winter? >Yes, some times, in some places. The Mountains of the Moon get quite a lot of snow, the Vale and the riverlands and the west rather less, but some. King’s Landing gets snow infrequently, the Storm Lands and the Reach rarely, Oldtown and Dorne almost never. >– June 21, 2001
2 years ago
Anonymous
Meanwhile in the show: The North never gets more than a sprinkling of snow, making it no problem for horses to gallop around despite "winter" being officially declared like five years ago.
>The going theory is that Westeros once was far more advanced and also had stable seasons. A massive meteor collision fricked the planet up and also massively peturbed its orbit, which is why the seasons are irregular now. The red comet in book 2 is probably an allusion to this.
No, it's confirmed in the World of Ice and Fire that the maesters have studied their planet's orbital mechanics, the orbits of the other planets, astronomy etc. and have concluded that there should be 4 seasons, each 3 months long. This seems to confirm that the cause for the long Summers and Winters is purely magical.
The Thousand Worlds is GRRM's other major book series. It's a collection of scifi stories where humanity expanded from the solar system and then ended up being sandwiched between two aggressive, telepathic hiveminded alien civilizations. Humanity wins, sort of, but at the cost of an "interregnum" or mass dark age across the cosmos, where planets have technological collapses and revert back to medieval technologies. It is a common theory that Planetos is in the same universe, and is one of those planets. The Squishers, the Others, and the Mermen are all genetically engineered humans designed to survive different environments, and the Valyrian-Dragon bond is also a genetically engineered concept. There's theta symbols all over the books and shows but they may be more callbacks than actual references. The Pale Child of the Steel Angels is also present in the House of Black and White in Arya's chapters (and again in The Forsaken), but GRRM claims Westeros is a different universe and these are all just nods to his previous works.
Sounds exactly like Warhammer 40K's Dark Age of Technology and Age of Strife, as well as the fan theory that the Warhammer Fantasy is a planet in the 40K world cut off from the rest of the Imperium.
Time.
The Florence Cathedral was built from 1296 to 1426.
St Peters Basilica 1506-1626. Literally all amazing buildings took forever to build with manual labor. And that's without unions or OSHA.
I'd probably add a few decades if you wanted to build such a building in such a remote location.
riverrun is a joyce reference. casterly rock is named after the casterlys, who with the lannisters complete the real-world lancaster pastiche. winterfell alludes to the fact that the first and second long night are ended in a battle there (winter literally falls at winterfell). there's at least a bit of depth to each. besides, martin doesn't like using wholly made up words because he's got some of the tolkien tism. english is his stand in for westerosi so westerosi place names are always entirely english >saltpans >maidenpool >oldtown >greenstone
Look up just how many cities are call "new city" in europe
It's not as obvious until you start translating the cities into the language of their founders then it becomes painful
Places like New York aren't anomalies, that's how Europe named their cities since literally always it's just harder to note due to centuries of bastardization
That's how everyone named their cities >Kyoto means capital city >Tokyo means capital of the east >Peking means northern capital >Shanghai means on the sea >Jerusalem means founded by Shalem
>the city was founded by Romulous
ROME >the city is a port
PORTLAND >the city was founded by Tsar Peter
ST PETERSBURG >the city is located at the place where the last butthurt Arab cried about exile
GIBRALTER >this island has tons of wood
MADEIRA >the locals don't understand wtf were asking
YUCATAN
frick that how the frick did they built that thing to begin with?
Medieval cranes couldn't reach that high and carving that thing out of pure rock would have been beyond ludicrously expensive
not to mention entirely pointless because it's tiny and has only 1 way in so it would be pathetically easy to just starve the people into submission
You're assuming that the besieged can bring up supplies effectively enough to remain stationary for weeks or months, when the reality is that medieval logistics depended greatly on what we would today term 'free market entrepreneurs' instead of army or state logistics units. Assuming that the locals are willing to supply food (at greatly above market price) there is still a finite amount in the area; extra food would need to be sourced from elsewhere and be able to reliably reach its market, which in rigged hostile terrain is incredibly risky.
And all this is assuming the nobleman leading the army has an unlimited amount of cash
extremely dumb idea anon
opens up your rear and supply train for harassment
not to mention the fact that you actually need to feed and pay your army, and both the food and plunder are inside of the city/castle
remember medieval era (or equivalent) armies weren't professionals, they could and would piss off if you didn't treat them right or hell outright switch to the enemy
Going around castles only worked in places like China which had strong border fortifications but largely unguarded open cities, and only worked if your army was highly mobile
Which of course is why the Mongols rolled right over them
logistics anon. castle has food and you have to invade with a massive supply chain to have food for your men because the nobles will burn all the crops so you can't forage for anything. on top of that the guys in the castles (of which there are hundreds) will ride out and kill your supply chain guys constantly.
So you need an overwhelming force and overwhelming logistics and overwhelming coordination to siege all their castles at the same time, also you have to hope no one invades you while you do this moronic shit.
IRL this didn't work because the force needed to properly siege a castle would leave little to go about raiding and protect your logistics and the enemy would have other forces elsewhere that could move in and harry you. If you tried to leave a smaller force the besieged would just sally forth or send out raids through other exits because unlike fathack IRL castles are placed strategically to contest roads and river ways not just to look cool in some far off desolate corner of the realm. That's why most warfare between antiquity to the mid modern era consisted of siege battles where at most a border fortress and town or province might change hands after several years of war, because before mobile artillery canned goods and mass communication the advantage had always laid with the defender even if they were a skeleton crew of soldiers manning a fortress besieged by an overwhelming enemy force such as the Ottoman siege of Candia (which took 21 years).
>have this huge fricking world >given just barely enough info about it >some of it sounds really fricking cool >explore none of that in your books or supplemental books
all of the Essos chapters are shit
it's better as a distant setting or would be more interesting explored by a Westerosi through a Westerosi perspective, like touching on the possible Andal cultural remnants and stuff like that
>>have this huge fricking world
just barely enough info about it >>some of it sounds really fricking cool
none of that in your books or supplemental books
I bet you think Middle Earth is Tolkein's entire setting.
homie do you have any idea of how long it takes too walk down the stairs on that thing? Leyton probably left his room a year ago and still haven't reached the bottom.
>Winds of Winter finally releases >it's been so long that I'd have to reread all the books to remember what the frick is going on with all the smaller characters and details >then have to wait another 10+ years for him to write the final book or more likely die, leaving it unfinished because he's made it clear that no other author would be allowed to complete it with his notes
I just don't see how anyone would want to read WoW at this point, except for the real diehard fans that have obsessively reread the books over and over all these years. If I'd known it would take this long I wouldn't have read the last book either. The only way he'd get me hyped is if he'd actually managed to bamboozle everyone and it turns out he's had the finale ready to go for ages and was just figuring out how to get there, releasing both at once.
>it's been so long that I'd have to reread all the books to remember what the frick is going on with all the smaller characters and details
man it just disgusts me to know that there's going to be a hundred different youtubers doing "recaps for winds" videos if George ever gives us a release date, and alt-shift-x's will be the best.
GoT has this problem of impossibly huge castles that would never be structurally sound to build out of stone and would be exhausting just to climb up the stairs of
>Though the Citadel has long sought to learn the manner by which it may predict the length and change of seasons, all efforts have been confounded. Septon Barth appeared to argue, in a fragmentary treatise, that the inconstancy of the seasons was a matter of magical art rather than trustworthy knowledge. Maester Nicol’s The Measure of the Days — otherwise a laudable work containing much of use — seems influenced by this argument. Based upon his work on the movement of stars in the firmament, Nicol argues unconvincingly that the seasons might once have been of a regular length, determined solely by the way in which the globe faces the sun in its heavenly course. The notion behind it seems true enough — that the lengthening and shortening of days, if more regular, would have led to more regular seasons — but he could find no evidence that such was ever the case, beyond the most ancient of tales.
Wiki says >The valley's rich black soil allows the Valemen to grow wheat, corn, and barley. Not even in Highgarden do the pumpkins grow any larger nor is the fruit any sweeter.
addendum: i looked on his website and the version there are pretty high-res, but they all have his obnoxious watermark. anyone got the watermark free versions?
no his watermark is one of the only ones ive ever liked and adds class to his art. i cant even visualize his pieces without his tolkien looking initials floating around
Nasmith's drawings are so good
it's a shame that the new GOT mods for Bannerlord coming out are all based off of the show unlike ACOK for Warband that was only lightly influenced by the show
Pussy.
OP didn't post a pic of my house
We know, touchvirgin.
Ass
The Eyrie is so impractical. In the books the castle has to be shut down when winter approaches. The place is empty half the time.
Whats the point of it? They boast how the attacker would need a million troops to conquer it. Why not just leave a small garrison and move away while they starve on that rock? Not like the castle holds any strategic significance like the fricking Twins bridge at least.
>Why not just leave a small garrison and move away while they starve on that rock?
this anon just invented sieging. absolute genius over here.
the castle is described as uncapturable even when besieged, which is clearly not true
It probably has a couple hidden ways into the valley.
Anyway, this is done in real life, in Meteora, Greece. It was mostly against non-professional armies (ie raiders and warlords) though.
just destroy the bridge and they're trapped in side you can dunk on their peasants and mines and what not
assuming you somehow had a force that could contest theirs they'd see you coming and burn all the crops and poison all wells in the entire area and just wait for you to starve while feeding themselves off the castle's granary. plus all their bannermen would do the same except they'd harry you the entire time too
The "bridge" is made by magic, good luck.
Why would an attacker ever bother? The land itself is just a bunch of empty mountains and hills populated exclusively by moronic bandit tribes. There's no resources worth exploiting, not even basic farm land. And it's off the beaten path controlling no important water or land route nor is it positioned to contest one. It's absolutely worthless, so worthless it's baffling why anyone would or could live there in the first place let alone generate the wealth to build a castle there. But of course this is a poorly thought out fantasy world so it doesn't have to make sense.
The Vale itself is a huge mountain valley with rich farmland fed by near perpetual streams of runoff from the surrounding mountains.
Nice headcanon. We never see anything like that.
We do, but it’s for all of fifteen seconds while CIA shows off his new watch.
It's described in detail, The Vale's rich black earth is the best quality farmland in the Vale.
That's why it's called Mountain and Vale, it isn't all mountain you moron.
Food that is brought up on a pulley elevator and stored in the uppermost castle.
The Eyrie is also the top of a mountain above three lower castles of varying levels of fortification, with the uppermost ones being crude wooden forts.
But at the steep elevation anyone that wanted to take them would be crushed by rocks thrown from the ramparts or shot to pieces because the only way to approach is a tiny fricking path carved into the rock.
So basically you just have to take the waycastle at the bottom (Stone) and then let Snow, Sky, and the Eyrie above them starve to death. It might take literally years if the castle was well stocked, but it's doable.
>winter
>half the time
…
Plenty of birds it looks like; they probably have men stock up the food stored with grain from the local towns and salted pork / fowl. You think how this mother fricker loves to write 5+ pages about food he would have described something of the like; but alas, there was never a feast in the Eyrie.
There is literally no need for birds to fly that high up, unless its a bird of prey and those are very rare to begin with
Salted pork?
gods we drank milk for days back then
They feed off Titty Milk
you dont have to live in a river to eat fish
This is what it was it was supposed to look like.
looks comfy until you think about how much the heating would cost
more like can you imagine how many steps you'd have to climb in damp, non-aerated environment?
In the books, the Lannister gold mines are still going strong - thousands and thousands of years of mining and they've not even exhausted any of their gold mines. It's only a show thing that the Lannister mines were no longer operating.
I never understood why people took that statement as anything serious. Martin never ever explained how the Seven Kingdoms tax system works.
How did the lannister mining not cause the inflation in their realm? did the hack ever explain?
>How did the lannister mining not cause the inflation in their realm?
I presume they didn't constantly shit out gold all over the place but regulated the flow of gold? I don't know honestly, I suck at economy. The whole setting is fricking moronic when you think about it. If they have winters that last years, how the frick does any wildlife manage to survive? Or many plants that are not suited for such a climate?
Winterfell takes wildlife control very seriously. They stable all the vulnerable species, while the rest migrate to the souf where there is no snow.
Do the Freys charge them toll?
Example: 1000 tons of total dug up gold exist in the world or GoT. The lannister mines dig up 100 tons this year. The total amount of gold is now 1100. Thats 10% inflation. Next year, the lannisters dig up another 100 tons. now that's less than 10% inflation because you added a fixed amount instead of 10% of 1100.
Over time this inflation approaches basically zero, as opposed to printing paper money, where not only the yearly increase of money supply stacks (as in 10% of 1000 is 100, but 10% of 1100 is 110), but the print speed is arbitrarily set by central bankers. Now matter how many slaves you send into a mine shaft or how many whips you swing, they won't make you 200 tons of gold just because you want more this year.
You're applying modern macroeconomic nonsense like rational consumers and perfect information, which are horseshit now, to a society at a state of advancement centuries before earth societies ever invented the 'science' of economics as something discrete from a sidenote in politics
Furthermore you have no idea what the gold supply is in westeros, how much they mine & sell, westeros' pop growth rate, if they ship some to essos for other valuables, and a million other factors
>modern macroeconomic nonsense
>before earth societies ever invented the 'science' of economics
what are you talking about? You don't need to be a physicist if you're rubbing sticks together to make fire.
It doesn't even have anything to do with economics in the grand scheme of things. The point I was making is that while on a technical level gold supply is inflated everyday by people digging it up, it's not the same as fiat currency.
Now there are two exceptions that WOULD make the lannisters gold act in a similar fashion to a money printer:
>1. a magical gold mine that gets bigger and easier to mine the longer you mine it
>2. the lannisters practice widespread coin clipping and are also producing miscalibrated scales and weights to keep up the ruse, because it's typically the death penalty if you get found out
Now any GoT loregay can chime in and mention if that's the case. Option 2 could be a political intrigue fit for the lannisters, but it would be a very risky venture that could eliminate all of their political power.
As someone before said, inflation and modern economics don't work the same in a pre-industrial society. And, even if they do, we have examples of similar situations in real life.
Diamonds, for example, are extremely common. Everyone knows this, and yet they're still highly valued. There are two factors at play,
1: being a heavily desirable luxury like gold and diamonds, demand always far outstrips supply
2: groups control the distribution. The Lannisters might mine 100 tons in a year, but they'll only release 1 or 2. Similar to real diamond companies that mine and produce massive amounts of diamonds, but only ever release a small amount.
Again I don't understand how "inflation" doesn't work in a pre-industrial society. Everyone from the romans throughout medieval societies had problems when their currency was debased, from coin clipping to mixing in lesser metals into coins. The chinese printed the first fiat currency around 1000 AD or so. The Yuan Dynasty literally went Weimar Republic nearly a thousand years before that republic existed. It would be like the lannisters dumping all of their gold at once because they absolutely, positively want to buy warships right fricking now. Which would be a one time thing as opposed to paper money where you can do this literally every day until your country goes up in flames.
The real question is: With what is a gold miner paid, in a society that uses gold not as trinkets or bling but as currency? Like 1kg of gold mined would equal 1000 1g gold coins. (disregard turning mined ore into a pure gold bar and turning that bar into coins for a sec)
A gold miner would be paid in coinage equal to the value of his labor, as determined by the mine owner. A generous owner might be willing to give a miner a portion of his daily productivity, or he might insist on a fixed rate of payment for a days labor; obviously, one will drive more labor engagement than the other but it really comes down to the manager's understanding of the mining firm
The Iron Throne must have had a highly regulated trade policy wherein the annual total value of imported goods and services was precisely fixed to the value of annual gold extraction, thereby ensuring the domestic monetary supply, and by extension prices, was constant
>I never understood why people took that statement as anything serious. Martin never ever explained how the Seven Kingdoms tax system works.
autism
>Canonically as large as San Francisco
Ted is a fricking king
>that galley building
cute
I really wish they'd used Ted Nasmith for LOTR and Hobbit illustrated editions instead of Alan Lee, I just feel like his artstyle just isn't complimentary to Tolkien's works.
Alan Lee is good, but I agree that Nasmith is better.
there are some editions that use his art, also he got to do the cover for Nature of Middle-earth
> are we the badies?
Oh man, you haven't seen shit. This shit right here is official "artwork" from The World of Ice and Fire. The dragons are literally copied and pasted from Skyrim. Like not just drawn that way, this is literally a rip of their renders.
hey atleast they don't live in the Dreadfort ruled by a house whose symbol is a flayed man.
I've got this theory about that and the "our blades are sharp" family words and the rest of the Northern houses compared to the Stark words. Like, the Bolton sigil and words are clearly nothing poetic. It's just straight up telling everyone not to frick with them. The southern(or newer) houses has more flowery words that more often are meant to mean something or stand for something, like how the Tully's are about honour and family because the house was only created during the Targ years when a newly founded house would want an impressive motto. Ned picked up this way of thinking about the Stark motto as something wise when he lived in the Eyrie, warning about future dangers and to be prepared or things will inevitably get worse etc. In reality the Starks were brutal men just like all the other Northern houses, who used to style themselves as The Kings of Winter. When the words began it was just them saying "We're coming for you, b***h" and likening themselves to the brutal winters that killed half the population, same as the Boltons are just saying they'll skin you alive if you make an enemy of them and the Karstark words are just saying that their patriarch was a The "sun" of "Winter".
that's pretty cool to think 'winter is coming' as a threat made by the house, not an actual weather forecast
>like how the Tully's are about honour and family because the house was only created during the Targ years when a newly founded house would want an impressive motto.
the tullys are a first man house and are about as old as other first man riverland houses
They only became a Great House with fancy words and shit during the Targ years though, right? They helped overthrow the much older family that ruled the area and so got a huge rise in status and needed fancy words. Probably a bunch of rich fishermen if their sigil is any sign. I realise that the way I wrote it it might have looked like I was saying they arrived with the Targs.
>They only became a Great House with fancy words and shit during the Targ years though, right? They helped overthrow the much older family that ruled the area and so got a huge rise in status and needed fancy words.
maybe? we dont really know when they made up those words, and "lesser" houses have words too so I imagine they made them up when they first got founded
>Probably a bunch of rich fishermen if their sigil is any sign.
probably, the Mootons have a similar sigil and they are also rich fishermen
>I realise that the way I wrote it it might have looked like I was saying they arrived with the Targs.
I read it as you saying they were made after they rebelled against the Hoares and were given lord paramountship
How would Loras Tyrell capture that?
It looks like a suicide mission.
he either went all in and him being a wienery gay got him fried by based rolland storm or he never went there in the first place
Instead of a moat, it has a maise.
>attackers have to navigate the maze to reach the walls
genius
>the lannisters just walked up and took this in a day
lmao
>it's Minas Tirith but the Arabian Nights version
Minas Tirith at least looks good.
>pelennor is actual farmland instead of a barren fricking grassland
holy based. you wanna complain about
>but what did they eat
start with jackson's gondor
It was winter. Really.
my head cannon is that jackson's gondor is more severely on the decline and the surrounding lands have become desolate as denethor descended into madness
>your headcanon
That’s exactly what Jackson’s Gondor depicts.
looks like about 200 people live in there
remids me of skyrim "cities"
Why is there a wall on top of the mountain range?
" the river runs through the castle "
brava martin
imagine how expensive it would be to keep that pointlessly-massive fire going all the time
>muh cuck hackshit
no-talent hack
how the frick do you build these things with medievel technology?
Magic and shit. The setting had a great number of advanced sorcery in the distant past, but shit happened, it died out or was forgotten.
>fantasy setting
autism is an unfortunate disease. I hope you overcome your struggle.
So much for the guy who asked about Aragorn's tax policy
Anon "it's a fantasy setting" doesn't excuse poor worldbuilding
Every setting needs one thing: internal consistency
For example if you establish that your setting has all powerful wizards, people who control the elements themselves, friendly frickhuge giants and what not, then yes, having impossible to build castles makes sense and is pretty cool
However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with, that everything very much depends on manual labor and the average peasant is possibly even worse off than medieval peasants, then no, making impossible buildings is NOT okay
furthermore, the difference between what you posted in your image and what was posted in the images you replied to is incredibly obvious, yours could be accomplished by digging and stacking dirt while the ones you replied to would be impossible to construct even using modern machinery
also your image is not medieval, it's Renaissance, deep into Renaissance, the date it was built is literally in your image (1593) and the reason it's built like that was to resist, by then, state of the art cannons
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with, that everything very much depends on manual labor and the average peasant is possibly even worse off than medieval peasants, then no, making impossible buildings is NOT okay
Are you moronic? ALL the good castles in Westeros are said to have been built by making deals with gods, tricking gods or with the help of giants or Children of the forest. All that means it was fricking magic that did it, before magic faded from the world and they had to make do building new castles and improving on the old ones using regular human manual labour instead of getting some giants to carry frickhuge stones, or Children to do their magic etc.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin
wat. even if you're a showgay moron did you seriously miss the part where the frickhuge wall of ice and stone is woven with spells and constructed by magic?
WOOAAAAHHHH HOLY FRICK HOW DID THEY JUST BUILD THIS WITH ONLY MANUAL LABOR
IMMERSION RUINED BRO
WHAT DO THEY EAT?!?!
Lots of fish
Fish.
That’s beautiful.
Yes, quite spectacularly so.
that is way less impractical than building a whole ass castle on the top of a steep mountain, suck my ass
It's not much more impractical when you've got fricking magic to help you.
NO WAY BRO DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THIS SHIT???
BUILDING ON MOUNTAINS IS IMPOSSIBLE NO WAYYYYYY BRO
>implying these tiny houses are comparable to giant ass castles
Is that a castle on a mountain!!!!
Aaahh!!! I'm going insane!!!
kek he has no response to this one
you won anon
I was sleeping you homosexuals! frick you!
That's a whole ass Buddhist temple, anon. Gotta be at least 80 foot high. How big do you think castles are?
>How big do you think castles are?
To be fair, Martin's castles are really frickhueg even before you get to Harrenhal. They're definitely bigger than the buildings we'd construct on mountains. The man isn't good at gauging distances, which is why he wrote that a dude standing on top of the wall could be shot with an arrow, when he made the wall as high as this building. The things being built are still explained by magic, though.
Don't think I'd like to take that fricker in a siege. What's the play? Boats? Guess you're best starving them out.
Realistically you wouldn't attack it at all, but if you were going to then probably something like a land bridge.
Be ready to take a loooong time though
Ignoring it and keeping the rest of the entire country
its an abbey
Imagining your moms sweaty meaty milf ass going CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP *squish* on my dick ahaha
You say that like there's dozens of these and this is a UN heritage site. Moron
I don't see how that's a good argument from your side. There aren't even a dozen fantastical castles in Westeros and they're all treated like their version of a UN heritage site, having stories about how they were built by magic. And that's if you count the ones like Winterfell where the only really fantastical bit is that they've got plumbing pumping hot springs water through the walls.
The ratio of practical to impractical keeps in Westeros is like 15/1.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with
All those things you mentioned in the previous sentence were true in Martin's world in the past.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with,
Did we read the same books? Because we are talking about a setting that built a giant frick off wall that spans the length of the continent centuries before the story.
>if you establish that your setting has all powerful wizards, people who control the elements themselves, friendly frickhuge giants
ASOIAF has all of that, yeah.
>However if you, like Martin, establish that your setting is barely supernatural to begin with
Wait, what? Did you not read the books?
>fantasy excuses all logic
>here let me post a real world example built with technology 400 years past what the fantasy book in question is supposed to possess
they literally just place 1 rock at a time? cant be that hard
There are hints of it being post apocalyptic as a setting, either from a high technology point or a previous high magic level including lovecraft gods like a conan setting.
redpill me on GOT being post apocalyptic.
When I say hints, I mean just hints, shit from the reference material,interviews, and one off lines in books. You'd be best served watching one of those lore channels like alt shift x, since it requires a certain amount of autism to put together.
There's a lot of creepy Lovecraftian stuff in the descriptions for the lands very far from Westeros in The World of Ice and Fire. Either this is to simulate how a medieval historian would write history (the further away from his knowledge the places he writes about are, the more superstitious metaphysical stuff he will imagine about them) or Westeros and Essos are really surrounded by the ruins of previous civilizations that suffered some kind of cataclysm at the hands of dark mysterious forces a long time ago.
>the ruins of previous civilizations that suffered some kind of cataclysm at the hands of dark mysterious forces a long time ago.
Wouldn't it be more likely that in ancient times there were lots of magic and magicians that built wondrous things. Then magic waned, just like it recently did before the books started, and those civilisations fell because they were too reliant on magic. In the hundreds of years of no magic the now magic-less people came up with stories to explain what kind of creature could have created the buildings that their own ancestors built. Just like the people of Westeros has all kinds of fricked up ideas about how long ago things were built, or when things were first created, and castles being built by one mythical builder etc.
Levers, pullies, and decades of work. Why do you think gothic cathedrals built in the 1200s look more impressive than anything today? Shit was built for like 90 straight years
Put one rock on top of another until it's done?????
Most of the badass castles like this one were built during the first age, when people had magic or advanced technology. Some castles are even older; the first men found them already built.
The going theory is that Westeros once was far more advanced and also had stable seasons. A massive meteor collision fricked the planet up and also massively peturbed its orbit, which is why the seasons are irregular now. The red comet in book 2 is probably an allusion to this.
I'll never understand the people who try to find a "realistic" reason for the seasons. If the seasons was down to a meteor fricking up the planet's orbit then all the kingdoms in Essos would have to do the exact same stuff that Westeros does, collecting food to survive each winter. They don't, otherwise things like the Dothraki wouldn't exist. It's a Westerosi problem because the Westerosi have Ice Fae living in their northern reaches that magically frick with things to make winters that last decades sometimes. GRRM's plans are to call the final book "A Dream Of Spring" because after everything goes down the Others will be vanquished for good and there'll be hope of a true Spring.
We don't need headcanon because the books already tell us about how magic used to be stronger and then waned to the point where it almost didn't exist, until the time of the books. That magic amply explains all the castles and bigger feats.
The season affect Essos also. The Dothraki hunker down at Vaes Dothrak.
Obviously not enough to make it a planetary thing, more like they get some extra cold from being near Westeros while places like The Summer Isles are untouched. If it was due to planetary orbits that force Westeros to get enough food collected to survive for decade-long winters then obviously some horsefrickers like the Dothraki wouldn't survive by just hunkering down in one spot.
I think Martin said only Westeros suffer that much during Winter because it's the only continent that stretch that far North.
Anon that still wouldn't make any sense. If we're talking about a meteor impact fricking up the planet's orbit to the point where you get winters that last for decades sometimes and only a year or two at other times then it wouldn't be located to one part, no matter how northern it is. The whole planet would be equally fricked by the highly irregular orbit.
>Though the Citadel has long sought to learn the manner by which it may predict the length and change of seasons, all efforts have been confounded. Septon Barth appeared to argue, in a fragmentary treatise, that the inconstancy of the seasons was a matter of magical art rather than trustworthy knowledge. Maester Nicol’s The Measure of the Days — otherwise a laudable work containing much of use — seems influenced by this argument. Based upon his work on the movement of stars in the firmament, Nicol argues unconvincingly that the seasons might once have been of a regular length, determined solely by the way in which the globe faces the sun in its heavenly course. The notion behind it seems true enough — that the lengthening and shortening of days, if more regular, would have led to more regular seasons — but he could find no evidence that such was ever the case, beyond the most ancient of tales.
I was not the same guy, I wasn't saying that the meteor is correct, I'm aware that Martin has said numerous time that it's a magical explanation (and that's probably tie to the Others, the song of Ice and to the Dragonlords, the song of Fire), I just repeat what Martin said.
>[Are the seasons irregular only in Westeros or also in the eastern continent?]
>The eastern continent (Essos) is further south than Westeros, and feels the North of the great sweep of the eastern sweep of the eastern lands is a huge ocean, the Shivering Sea. Only Westeros extends to the far north.
>–Asshai.com forum chat, July 27, 2008
>Surely, the import of grain from the South alone can’t cover the North’s needs. And, by the way, does it snow in the South during the winter?
>Yes, some times, in some places. The Mountains of the Moon get quite a lot of snow, the Vale and the riverlands and the west rather less, but some. King’s Landing gets snow infrequently, the Storm Lands and the Reach rarely, Oldtown and Dorne almost never.
>– June 21, 2001
Meanwhile in the show: The North never gets more than a sprinkling of snow, making it no problem for horses to gallop around despite "winter" being officially declared like five years ago.
>The going theory is that Westeros once was far more advanced and also had stable seasons. A massive meteor collision fricked the planet up and also massively peturbed its orbit, which is why the seasons are irregular now. The red comet in book 2 is probably an allusion to this.
No, it's confirmed in the World of Ice and Fire that the maesters have studied their planet's orbital mechanics, the orbits of the other planets, astronomy etc. and have concluded that there should be 4 seasons, each 3 months long. This seems to confirm that the cause for the long Summers and Winters is purely magical.
The Thousand Worlds is GRRM's other major book series. It's a collection of scifi stories where humanity expanded from the solar system and then ended up being sandwiched between two aggressive, telepathic hiveminded alien civilizations. Humanity wins, sort of, but at the cost of an "interregnum" or mass dark age across the cosmos, where planets have technological collapses and revert back to medieval technologies. It is a common theory that Planetos is in the same universe, and is one of those planets. The Squishers, the Others, and the Mermen are all genetically engineered humans designed to survive different environments, and the Valyrian-Dragon bond is also a genetically engineered concept. There's theta symbols all over the books and shows but they may be more callbacks than actual references. The Pale Child of the Steel Angels is also present in the House of Black and White in Arya's chapters (and again in The Forsaken), but GRRM claims Westeros is a different universe and these are all just nods to his previous works.
Sounds exactly like Warhammer 40K's Dark Age of Technology and Age of Strife, as well as the fan theory that the Warhammer Fantasy is a planet in the 40K world cut off from the rest of the Imperium.
yeah well 1KW started in like the 60s and 70s, long before Warhammer, but I doubt George was the first to come up with it.
Time.
The Florence Cathedral was built from 1296 to 1426.
St Peters Basilica 1506-1626. Literally all amazing buildings took forever to build with manual labor. And that's without unions or OSHA.
I'd probably add a few decades if you wanted to build such a building in such a remote location.
Lazy zoomers didn't exist back then. People actually did their jobs properly.
>show with dragons in it
>how did they build this buildng wtf
ackthually none of the castles in GoT except maybe dragonstone was built by dragons. It was giants.
>meanwhile humanity before the medieval era had created concrete stronger than what is used in the modern day
Based Ted Nasmith poster
has any of you ever been to San Marino?
birsd
Jesus christ Martin naming is fricking awful
>uuuuh it is castle in a rock
CASTERLY ROCK
>uuuuuuh it is a castle with a golden spear
THE SUNSPEAR
>uuuuuuh it is a castle in a place that is heavily hit by the winter
WINTERFELL
>uuuuhh it is a castle in the middle of a running river
RIVERRUN
Oh man, I bet you'd love the name they have for this one big wall up in the North.
oh do tell us Martin! what is it named???
The Wall.
BRAVO BRAVO
TRULY, THE AMERICAN TOLKIEN
riverrun is a joyce reference. casterly rock is named after the casterlys, who with the lannisters complete the real-world lancaster pastiche. winterfell alludes to the fact that the first and second long night are ended in a battle there (winter literally falls at winterfell). there's at least a bit of depth to each. besides, martin doesn't like using wholly made up words because he's got some of the tolkien tism. english is his stand in for westerosi so westerosi place names are always entirely english
>saltpans
>maidenpool
>oldtown
>greenstone
>a river meanders
>call the river Mander
BRAVO GEORGE
the major port city of Antwerp is literally named after an old word for meander or river bend
to be fair anon
look up real names of european cities and their origins
people have been uncreative as hell in naming their shit forever
>hey we've built this port city at the mouth of a river
>what shall we name it?
"Portsmouth"
>BRILLIANT
I find it hilarious that there's a city called the White City in Europe.
Look up just how many cities are call "new city" in europe
It's not as obvious until you start translating the cities into the language of their founders then it becomes painful
Places like New York aren't anomalies, that's how Europe named their cities since literally always it's just harder to note due to centuries of bastardization
That's how everyone named their cities
>Kyoto means capital city
>Tokyo means capital of the east
>Peking means northern capital
>Shanghai means on the sea
>Jerusalem means founded by Shalem
shut the frick up DaQuarius
based
based
canonically correct
also to answer your OP question, carts. the carts are not in the show but are very fundamental to the Eyrie.
>this city is on a large river
>call the city london(from the great river)
The british are fricking hacks.
>the city was founded by Romulous
ROME
>the city is a port
PORTLAND
>the city was founded by Tsar Peter
ST PETERSBURG
>the city is located at the place where the last butthurt Arab cried about exile
GIBRALTER
>this island has tons of wood
MADEIRA
>the locals don't understand wtf were asking
YUCATAN
frick that how the frick did they built that thing to begin with?
Medieval cranes couldn't reach that high and carving that thing out of pure rock would have been beyond ludicrously expensive
not to mention entirely pointless because it's tiny and has only 1 way in so it would be pathetically easy to just starve the people into submission
You're assuming that the besieged can bring up supplies effectively enough to remain stationary for weeks or months, when the reality is that medieval logistics depended greatly on what we would today term 'free market entrepreneurs' instead of army or state logistics units. Assuming that the locals are willing to supply food (at greatly above market price) there is still a finite amount in the area; extra food would need to be sourced from elsewhere and be able to reliably reach its market, which in rigged hostile terrain is incredibly risky.
And all this is assuming the nobleman leading the army has an unlimited amount of cash
i dont get sieges, cant you just you know go around the castle
>oh no the enemy king has holed himself in some castle.. anyway..
extremely dumb idea anon
opens up your rear and supply train for harassment
not to mention the fact that you actually need to feed and pay your army, and both the food and plunder are inside of the city/castle
remember medieval era (or equivalent) armies weren't professionals, they could and would piss off if you didn't treat them right or hell outright switch to the enemy
Going around castles only worked in places like China which had strong border fortifications but largely unguarded open cities, and only worked if your army was highly mobile
Which of course is why the Mongols rolled right over them
logistics anon. castle has food and you have to invade with a massive supply chain to have food for your men because the nobles will burn all the crops so you can't forage for anything. on top of that the guys in the castles (of which there are hundreds) will ride out and kill your supply chain guys constantly.
So you need an overwhelming force and overwhelming logistics and overwhelming coordination to siege all their castles at the same time, also you have to hope no one invades you while you do this moronic shit.
IRL this didn't work because the force needed to properly siege a castle would leave little to go about raiding and protect your logistics and the enemy would have other forces elsewhere that could move in and harry you. If you tried to leave a smaller force the besieged would just sally forth or send out raids through other exits because unlike fathack IRL castles are placed strategically to contest roads and river ways not just to look cool in some far off desolate corner of the realm. That's why most warfare between antiquity to the mid modern era consisted of siege battles where at most a border fortress and town or province might change hands after several years of war, because before mobile artillery canned goods and mass communication the advantage had always laid with the defender even if they were a skeleton crew of soldiers manning a fortress besieged by an overwhelming enemy force such as the Ottoman siege of Candia (which took 21 years).
cum (mine)
Tax forms.
Dwarf cum.
>have this huge fricking world
>given just barely enough info about it
>some of it sounds really fricking cool
>explore none of that in your books or supplemental books
Wow two big blocks of legos bravo Kojima
post the real one
Here
We see about 2/3 of the map in the books though. Pretty much everything left of the Bone Mountains.
all of the Essos chapters are shit
it's better as a distant setting or would be more interesting explored by a Westerosi through a Westerosi perspective, like touching on the possible Andal cultural remnants and stuff like that
>>have this huge fricking world
just barely enough info about it
>>some of it sounds really fricking cool
none of that in your books or supplemental books
I bet you think Middle Earth is Tolkein's entire setting.
Grain and other food taken from their peasants and stored in large silos in the castles, same as all the other nobles?
Ears.
Dalton Greyjoy isekai
The Vale is one of the most fertile regions, i'd assume they stock their shit
Can someone explain what's up with the Hightowers? Why won't Leyton come down from his tower?
Shit's comfy up there and he's got all the books he could need. Why would he come down when he's got books?
homie do you have any idea of how long it takes too walk down the stairs on that thing? Leyton probably left his room a year ago and still haven't reached the bottom.
Goats , Birds... Cat Starks older sister's tit milk
>memes that were always unfunny shit
Cars and bars and smismars
Imported foods from local areas?
>breaks bridge
>they all die of thirst
More importantly, what was their tax policy?
every woman must provide 1 liter of breastmilk per day too Lord Arryn
that's it
Send the Sherif of Nottingshire to rack heads.
Food.
Been so long and the last book was such a mess I think I'll just skip it all together
>Winds of Winter finally releases
>it's been so long that I'd have to reread all the books to remember what the frick is going on with all the smaller characters and details
>then have to wait another 10+ years for him to write the final book or more likely die, leaving it unfinished because he's made it clear that no other author would be allowed to complete it with his notes
I just don't see how anyone would want to read WoW at this point, except for the real diehard fans that have obsessively reread the books over and over all these years. If I'd known it would take this long I wouldn't have read the last book either. The only way he'd get me hyped is if he'd actually managed to bamboozle everyone and it turns out he's had the finale ready to go for ages and was just figuring out how to get there, releasing both at once.
>it's been so long that I'd have to reread all the books to remember what the frick is going on with all the smaller characters and details
man it just disgusts me to know that there's going to be a hundred different youtubers doing "recaps for winds" videos if George ever gives us a release date, and alt-shift-x's will be the best.
Maybe you can alt shift X's wiener
GoT has this problem of impossibly huge castles that would never be structurally sound to build out of stone and would be exhausting just to climb up the stairs of
So you agree, it's magic?
Grain from the Value. End of thread.
Vale*
sneed
Wiki says
>The valley's rich black soil allows the Valemen to grow wheat, corn, and barley. Not even in Highgarden do the pumpkins grow any larger nor is the fruit any sweeter.
addendum: i looked on his website and the version there are pretty high-res, but they all have his obnoxious watermark. anyone got the watermark free versions?
no his watermark is one of the only ones ive ever liked and adds class to his art. i cant even visualize his pieces without his tolkien looking initials floating around
i dig the initials too, it's the obnoxious ribbon on the top half i dislike
at least it tells you what the piece of art is supposed to be showing so it has some use
i'm not questioning it's utility, it's just i wanted to use these as wallpapers and the ribbon is annoying
no i dont know, i even used to have a calendar of his art and i think they had at least his signature on it still
Nasmith's drawings are so good
it's a shame that the new GOT mods for Bannerlord coming out are all based off of the show unlike ACOK for Warband that was only lightly influenced by the show
honestly what I hate is that ASOIF stuck with the stupid medieval stasis bullshit rather than showing late medieval guns and stuff.
gunpowder is gay, famalam
It's even more stupidly high and treacherous in the books. Takes them like a full day of climbing to get up to the top and they almost die
elf bread