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Post by ac on Aug 28, 2016 18:44:24 GMT
Or, you know, the Others’ swords are in fact real ice and are awesome because magic.
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Post by snowfyre on Aug 28, 2016 18:53:48 GMT
I find the name of dragon steel interesting. As has been mentioned already, steel did not exist during the Age of Heroes so it seems like an odd choice. Maybe this was just the name given to the material by the people who eventually wrote the story down thousands of years later but why change it?Translation issue. The Andals were the first to record written history in Westeros. Unlike the First Men, the Andals were likely quite familiar with steel by the time these histories were recorded. So the real question might be... what word or concept were the Andals replacing / translating, when they chose the word "steel?"
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Post by wolfmaid7 on Aug 28, 2016 19:14:52 GMT
Or, you know, the Others’ swords are in fact real ice and are awesome because magic. I will go with this one because of GRRMs quote about the Others doing amazing stuff with ice and can make "materials" out of it.So i think there swords are magical ice. Now the original ice may not be,it could have been formed from a stone that looks like ice. What's interesting to me is this.It is said that the Iron throne is made up of the surrendered swords of his enemies.I would have expected the swords of the Kings of Westeros to be in there somewhere.So who was the last person to have the original Ice? I honestly can't remember,was it Tohreen and if so could it be it was surrendered to Aegon,and is part of the Iron throne.Or did the Starks lose the original way before they knelt?
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Post by Ser Duncan on Aug 28, 2016 19:17:37 GMT
I find the name of dragon steel interesting. As has been mentioned already, steel did not exist during the Age of Heroes so it seems like an odd choice. Maybe this was just the name given to the material by the people who eventually wrote the story down thousands of years later but why change it? Basically what snowfyre said. The word itself is not the original word for whatever sword (weapon really) that was used against the Others. Given that we know, from a PoV character, that dragon glass kills them, it would seem the word steel is in replacement to an entirely different form of weapon. I agree with you on the idea the swords were in fact dragon teeth or dragon bone since their bones are full of iron. I wonder if they were smelted and forged from the bones of long dead dragons, or if they just fashioned handles for them. Possibly grinding ribs into scimitars.
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Post by Ser Duncan on Aug 28, 2016 19:20:22 GMT
I honestly can't remember,was it Tohreen and if so could it be it was surrendered to Aegon,and is part of the Iron throne.Or did the Starks lose the original way before they knelt? I think the original Ice was lost long before Tohren knelt. Also Tohren's sword can't be part of the Iron Throne because he never gave up Ice 2.0, Ned still had it.
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Post by min on Aug 28, 2016 19:23:41 GMT
I'm also thinking of the Ebony Blade again, the one that is the basis for Dawn. The Ebony Blade is, of course, black, and glows with red fire in battle. It is a near indestructible sword, vulnerable only to a weapon carved from the same meteorI think we could still be talking about dragons. The moon cracked and dragons poured forth. Meteors, meteorites and valyrian steel. Meteors and fire breathing dragons being interchangeable in the old tales. Same with a falling star/meteorite/dragon.
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Post by wolfmaid7 on Aug 28, 2016 19:31:55 GMT
Basically what slowfyre (ghost chorus) said. The word itself is not the original word for whatever sword (weapon really) that was used against the Others. Given that we know, from a PoV character, that dragon glass kills them, it would seem the word steel is in replacement to an entirely different form of weapon. I agree with you on the idea the swords were in fact dragon teeth or dragon bone since their bones are full of iron. I wonder if they were smelted and forged from the bones of long dead dragons, or if they just fashioned handles for them. Possibly grinding ribs into scimitars. Dragonglass equates Obsidian right? Or so Jon guessed based of what Sam read in the annals.Am i correct? I think the original Ice was lost long before Tohren knelt. Also Tohren's sword can't be part of the Iron Throne because he never gave up Ice 2.0, Ned still had it. This is what i'm tring to figure out wasn't Ice 2.0 Vayrian steel given two House Stark by Aegon? If someone could find a quote about the original Ice that would be cool.
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Post by Ser Duncan on Aug 28, 2016 19:44:48 GMT
Dragonglass equates Obsidian right? Or so Jon guessed based of what Sam read in the annals.Am i correct? Yes, dragonglass, or frozen fire as Melisandre calls it are both obsidian. IIRC, Luwin says the small folk call it dragonglass, but its correct name is Obsidian. This is what i'm tring to figure out wasn't Ice 2.0 Vayrian steel given two House Stark by Aegon? If someone could find a quote about the original Ice that would be cool. I just did a quick search and all I can find at the mo' is this, from Catelyn 1 in Thrones...
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 28, 2016 20:21:13 GMT
So the real question might be... what word or concept were the Andals replacing / translating, when they chose the word "steel?" Excellent point. I wouldn't think the original Ice would have been dragonbone - it's flexibility is it's hallmark, hence why it's typically used for bows, hair clips, etc. And yes, obsidian in real world can certainly shatter....but so does ice, which is what Otherswords seem to be kinda-sorta made of, and we see those shattering steel swords and slicing through mail like butter - so because magic, right? Why couldn't this apply to obsidian in-world? Also, the Children are/were harvesting the obsidian to give to the NW. Were they taming dragons too? Because nowhere in the story do we have indication that the CotF have ANY contact with dragons from which they could 1) obtain and 2) craft weaponry out of dragonbone. Especially back in the Dawn Age. I mean, I suppose they could have stumbled upon some massive Balerion-sized corpse 8-10k years ago and have been working their way through it like the Native Americans did with buffalo remains, but that is a comepletely hypothetical speculation based on no text-based evidence whatsoever. It makes slightly more sense to me to think of them fashioning something out of a material already readily available to them, one that we now know has magical properties to atomize an Other. Frozen FIRE defeats ICE. Re: Torrhen, I believe one of the conditions of his surrender would be that he retain wardenship of the North and keep Ice. All the swords that Aegon used in the Iron Throne were from enemies defeated in battle - Torrhen Stark was not defeated, he surrendered willingly.
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Post by min on Aug 28, 2016 20:29:54 GMT
Especially back in the Dawn Age. I mean, I suppose they could have stumbled upon some massive Balerion-sized corpse 8-10k years ago and have been working their way through it like the Native Americans did with buffalo remains, but that is a comepletely hypothetical speculation based on no text-based evidence whatsoever. Like Nagga's bones for example. LOL
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Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Aug 28, 2016 20:33:30 GMT
Like Nagga's bones for example. Is Nagga a real, actual creature though? Or are the bones just a bunch of petrified weirwoods that ancient peoples grew in a certain formation? "Bonehenge" We just don't know. I would think though that if the Children were utilizing dragonbone in some fashion then or now, it would have been referenced somewhere at least once in five novels.
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Post by ac on Aug 28, 2016 20:34:12 GMT
I find the name of dragon steel interesting. As has been mentioned already, steel did not exist during the Age of Heroes so it seems like an odd choice. Maybe this was just the name given to the material by the people who eventually wrote the story down thousands of years later but why change it?Translation issue. The Andals were the first to record written history in Westeros. Unlike the First Men, the Andals were likely quite familiar with steel by the time these histories were recorded. So the real question might be... what word or concept were the Andals replacing / translating, when they chose the word "steel?"Yep, you've managed to say much more clearly what I was trying to get across
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Post by ac on Aug 28, 2016 20:45:27 GMT
Also, the Children are/were harvesting the obsidian to give to the NW. Were they taming dragons too? Because nowhere in the story do we have indication that the CotF have ANY contact with dragons from which they could 1) obtain and 2) craft weaponry out of dragonbone. Especially back in the Dawn Age. I mean, I suppose they could have stumbled upon some massive Balerion-sized corpse 8-10k years ago and have been working their way through it like the Native Americans did with buffalo remains, but that is a comepletely hypothetical speculation based on no text-based evidence whatsoever. As far as I'm aware we don't even have evidence of dragons (at least of the flying variety) existing during the Dawn Age. Not even in the World Book.
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Post by min on Aug 28, 2016 20:56:28 GMT
This is what GRRM said about it:
December 11, 1999 Dragons in Westeros
In 'The Hedge Knight' ancient dragons are mentioned, thousands of years olds. Were there Dragons in Westeros before the Targaryens brought them, or did the Targaryens bring the skeletons of the old Dragons with them?
There were dragons all over, once.
The follow up question, which I realise may be something you keep for the books, is what happened to the Dragons out of Westeros? If I understood correctly, the Alchemists say that there were no more Dragons anywhere. Was that so?
There are no more dragons known to exist... but this is a medieval period, and large parts of the world are still terra incognita, so there are always tales of dragon sightings in far off mysterious places. The maesters tend to discount those.
So quite possibly the dawn sword came with the Dayne ancestors from Essos rather than being something the cotf whipped up. Once again with a conflated story tied to it's origins.
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Post by Ser Duncan on Aug 28, 2016 21:03:28 GMT
We just don't know. I would think though that if the Children were utilizing dragonbone in some fashion then or now, it would have been referenced somewhere at least once in five novels. We don't have evidence of the Children using it that I can recall, but we do have evidence that dragonbone is used. The blade that is at the heart of this whole thing, the blade that was meant for Bran, is Valyrian steel with a Dragonbone handle. So either the Valyrians fashioned it that way, or the Westerosi took a small blade of VS and attached a bit of dragonbone to it.
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