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Post by Ser Duncan on May 10, 2016 1:40:41 GMT
In the book, really? I just don't recall that. The "blow it thrice" bit, I mean. But I suppose Victarion's not on the show? I believe both Moqorro and Victarion are going by what Euron had the burnt up bloke do. Unless I dreamed it (or it was something we argued vehemently in Heresy) yes, Vic has a conversation with 3 of his crew about blowing the horn. Oh wait, maybe that was a preview chapter reading I'm thinking of! It may all be from Winds... No Victarion was not cast, as far as I'm aware. His role, the speculation says, will be done by Yara/Asha. Edited to fix the run on sentence, sorry Snowy.
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Post by Maester Flagons on May 10, 2016 1:45:17 GMT
The three blasts of Dragon binder I don't recall, but there are three men to sound it once each. Which neatly ties in to the three blasts for Others. Thinking about artificial animal calls, they can give a sound of distress; calling to a family member; calling in back-up, warning those around, so it would make sense for the Horn of Joramun to be used for multiple purposes.
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Post by Ser Duncan on May 10, 2016 1:56:47 GMT
The three blasts of Dragon binder I don't recall, but there are three men to sound it once each. Which neatly ties in to the three blasts for Others. Oh thank you Flagons! I thought I was going mad...Well madder perhaps
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Post by Melifeather on May 10, 2016 2:01:09 GMT
I still really like the idea of the howl horn that wakes the third eye sleep wargers and that the dead Stark wargs are the giants that come up out of their earth tombs.
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Post by min on May 10, 2016 6:26:01 GMT
A video of wolf howls that is pretty cool. I especially like the first group. youtu.be/op7fRsvWowAComparing a wolf howl and a horn sound. That's haunting! Heh, the haunted forest... On a cold night, you would hear that for miles. For some reason, I think that dragonbinder would be a more grating sound, more like the Titan of Braavos; a blast like rock grinding; something that shakes the bones, something incredibly loud and jarring to the senses. Something like this: Incredibly Annoying Sound
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Post by min on Jul 17, 2016 21:04:36 GMT
Interesting. I was just reading the essay at Westeros on direwolfs waking the sleepers and now I have to ask the question: if Joramun's horn was a direwolf, who is Joramun? Was he both the King Beyond the Wall AND the King of Winterfell, the wildlings and the men of the North joined together under one command? Was he a lord commander like Jon? If the horn wakes the sleeping giants in the crypts; does Mance's horn put them back to sleep as Jon muses to himself? Is Jon the new 'horned lord"?
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Post by min on Jul 17, 2016 22:19:21 GMT
In addition, there are still three mysterious horns all with glyphs. If Moqorro can read the glyphs on Dragonbinder; what are the chances the Melisandre can also read the glyphs on Mance's horn? I'd say the probability is high.
So, two things:
1) The broken horn, a seemingly ordinary horn of the type that the NW uses; must be repaired and sounded and this will trigger Ghost and that both are needed to wake giants in the earth. The reason that Ghost is silent is that Sam's horn is broken. It is Ghost who takes Jon to that horn in the first place.
2) Mance's great horn is tied to the magic in the wall since both Melisandre and Val say it must not be sounded or the wall will fall.
I'm still guessing that Mel did not destroy Mance's horn but switched with with the NW's great horn on top of the wall.
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Post by min on Jul 18, 2016 13:31:42 GMT
“She burned that fine big horn, aye. A bloody sin, I call it. A thousand years old, that was. We found it in a giant’s grave, and no man o’ us had ever seen a horn so big. That must have been why Mance got the notion to tell you it were Joramun’s. He wanted you crows to think he had it in his power to blow your bloody Wall down about your knees. But we never found the true horn, not for all our digging. If we had, every kneeler in your Seven Kingdoms would have chunks o’ ice to cool his wine all summer.” - Tormund
“We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.” Dalla
"He had once heard his uncle Benjen say that the Wall was a sword east of Castle Black, but a snake to the west." - Benjen
“We never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never fond the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!" i - Ygritte
“The Horn of Joramun? No. Call it the Horn of Darkness. If the Wall falls, night falls as well, the long night that never ends. It must not happen, will not happen!” - Melisandre
Had Mance Rayder lied to him, or was Tormund lying now? If Mance’s horn was just a feint, where is the true horn? - Jon
Indeed where is the true horn? One that sounds in the true tongue; the song of earth; the song of the direwolf? Clearly Mance found something in a giant's grave. Something Mel fears after examining it. She calls it the horn of darkness and sets up a pretense of destroying it. An object that I don't think she has the ability to destroy or the willingness to destroy. So she hides it.
Dalla gives the warning that sorcery is like a sword without a hilt; that there is no safe way to grasp it. Benjen describes the Wall as exactly that a sword with a serpent for a hilt. There is a price to pay for using it; an appropriate warning against the careless use of such an object.
Both Ygritte and Tormund say that Joramun's Horn wasn't found even though they opened up 50 graves and released all those ghosts. But they did find the great horn in a 'giant's grave' under a glacier. What they may have overlooked was the broken horn since it is of the common type found everywhere and broken and useless at that. Both horns are marked with runes establishing an ominous character. I think it's probably that both horns were together in the same grave with one guardian. Joramun, a giant of man for his time and possibly one in the same with Coldhands.
In my view, both are Horns of Joramun, their last keeper.
Why is the small horn broken? Did it just break over time or was it broken on purpose and then hidden away. As Jon muses, if the horn can wake the sleepers can it put them back to sleep? If Bran the Builder made the wall or more specifically the magic warding in the Wall and he built Winterfell; did he also make the horns? One to call the Kings of Winter and bind them in the hour of need and one to bring down the Wall at the appointed time? Were they both entrusted to the Night's Watch?
Did the Night's King use this horn for his own purposes binding his "brothers with strange sorceries"? A terrible betrayal of the Stark oath and pact, if so. Did Bran the Breaker then break the horn so it could not be used for evil purposes again; giving it into Joramun's safe keeping with only the lore of the Wildlings to hint at it's location.
Both horns have now, in a way, come back to the Night's Watch. The great horn, once again hidden and the broken horn with Sam, who will no doubt suss out it's significance.
Jon doesn't belong in the crypts with the Kings of Winter. It's not his place any more than it was Joramun's. His purpose is the call the Kings of Winter to defend the realm. The horrible curse of the Starks to defend the realm in life and beyond into death; until their bones turn to dust. This is why there must always be a Stark in Winterfell.
Ghost will not sing until the broken horn is repaired and Jon winds it.
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Post by Melifeather on Jul 19, 2016 0:11:40 GMT
All good points and questions min.
The part about the Nights King binding the Watch to his will... I took that to mean that he used their bodies as hosts, skinchanging into them and taking over their minds.
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Post by min on Jul 19, 2016 9:01:53 GMT
I think Old Nan's stories point to the NK as having various 3EC abilities/ I vaccilate between whether this is one character or a composite character:
1) entering the dreams of the 'prentice boys who all see a different face (analogous to the faceless men and/or the god of many faces - greenseers) 2) the 'prentice boys (fail the flying test) and die shorty afterwards except for Mad Axe - sacrificing his children 3) the thing that comes in the night; later seen beyond the wall with the boys chained behind him shuffling along like wights 4) gives his seed to the 'ice queen' birthing white shadows? in the opposite manner to Stannis and Melisandre?
It's not clear to me who the original members of the NW might have been. All Starks? All brothers? What we are told about that horn is that it wakes the sleepers; something that is re-iterated over and over in Jon's POV at Castle Black; the blast of the horn to wake the watch just before dawn. Sleepers seems to be a euphamism for death since we know the dead can rise again. The broken horn looks like it has the hallmarks of a dread object. Given our description of Dragonbinder; I'm extrapolating that the broken horn also has a binding purpose and this is the device used by the NK to bind his brothers with strange sorceries. As Dalla said; the Horned Lord warned about sorcerous objects. So I think this horn is also tied to the Wall's magic along with the other Horn of Joramun.
Since it is Ghost or something controlling Ghost; that leads Jon to the dragonglass cache; it seems that Jon is meant to have that horn for a reason.
Where are the direwolves in the NK story? We only have blind Symeon Star-Eyes who tells the story of visiting the Wall and seeing the hell hounds fighting.
added:
Wolfmaid and others make the observation that the NK is an office to be held and I like that quite a bit. I think the broken horn goes with the office.
If the direwolves are horns that wake the sleepers; then Bran and Jon are unique in that they both have their 3rd eye opened. Bran in his coma dream when the the crow pecks at his forehead; and Jon when weirBran touches Jon on the forehead during his direwolf dream. The difference between them is that Bran was called by the direwolves while he was still in a coma and woke shortly afterwards; while Ghost is still silent and Jon is not fully 'awake' at this point.
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Post by Melifeather on Jul 19, 2016 11:00:29 GMT
I'd like to reexamine the passages that talk about the apprentice boys, because I think I must have skimmed those without meditating on the meaning. I think of Euron as a failed greenseer apprentice. Are these apprentice boys greenseer apprentices? Do you have the passage or passages handy? If we view the 3EC as the "thing that comes in the night"...can the 3EC take control over the minds of apprentices in their dreams? As for the Night's King giving his seed...I don't recall the end result was a "birthing" of white shadows. I thought the babies themselves were sacrificed? My understanding of the third eye is that all wargs and skinchangers have a third eye. The ability to open the third eye is what constitutes the ability to move into another host. Warging/Skinchanging is a type of mind control, but the warg/skinchanger also inhabits the host while retaining a connection to their own body. There is a similar discussion in this thread: The Connection Between Warging and Opening the Third Eye
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Post by min on Jul 19, 2016 13:03:39 GMT
Most of these tales are Bran's recollections of Old Nan's tales. I interpret or reframe them slightly differently. As for the tale that the NK gave the Ice Queen his seed and lost his soul; that sounds a bit like Stannis giving his seed to Melisandre for birthing the shadow babies. We have an associated obscure term white shadows. But I'm not sure that that is what it is either. This could be another way of saying that there was a marriage pact of a type; since we really don't know much about his supposed queen. He gave her his "seed" could mean he pledged the Stark seed down the generations to her in some way. The pledge to protect is a big theme running through Ned's arc in GoT. How the stories are framed depends on the motivations of the storyteller. I don't have the exact passages handy; but they can be found here: awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Old_NanI do think that the NK was the first 3EC and when you view Nan's stories under that lens they have another significance. The stories start to make a bit of sense based on what we know about the current 3EC. I suspect that when the apprentice boys tell their LC that they have the same dream; they are being tested on flying in the same manner as Bran. They fly or they die. All of them died except for Mad Axe who does seem to have his analog in Euron, maddest of the all. In a sense, if you fail the test, you are sacrificed for the cause. The Night's Watch is the family and the apprentice boys, the LC's children. Hence the story that the NK sacrificed children in the slimmed down version. I have the sense that Euron is an abomination; someone who does on occassion experience a form of 'possession'. It's possible that the NK controlled his brothers through the same means; but I don't know. There is a very strong taboo both with skinchangers and wargs in general and within Bran himself; who wants to make sure that nobody suspects he uses this ability on Hodor. Possibly because Hodor is Bran's back door out of the place should he so decide. I will check out the link.
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Post by Melifeather on Jul 19, 2016 13:20:37 GMT
I agree seed can signify generations as well as children. The story may be slanted with the victor's point of view painting the defeated as being evil.
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Post by Ser Duncan on Jul 19, 2016 15:12:35 GMT
If the direwolves are horns that wake the sleepers; then Bran and Jon are unique in that they both have their 3rd eye opened. Bran in his coma dream when the the crow pecks at his forehead; and Jon when weirBran touches Jon on the forehead during his direwolf dream. The difference between them is that Bran was called by the direwolves while he was still in a coma and woke shortly afterwards; while Ghost is still silent and Jon is not fully 'awake' at this point. The thing is WeirBran actually touches Ghost, not Jon. Jon loses contact with Ghost no sooner Bran reaches down and touches Ghost's head only to regain it when Ghost is in a different place. There's a thread around here specifically about that. My belief is that Ghost has had his third eye opened and this Ghost abilities the other wolves don't have. More specifically, it gives Ghost the ability to choose when Jon can skinchange with him and to skinchange Jon back. It's much later, after this happened, where Jon loses consciousness while fighting Iron Emmet. In other words with these two it goes both ways. Something that is also hinted at that Summer can do with Bran in the scene where Bran wishes he could understand the direwolves howling. He howls so much he loses himself in the sound and is only brought back when someone (Luwin?) sends for the wolves to be quieted. Most of these tales are Bran's recollections of Old Nan's tales. I interpret or reframe them slightly differently. As for the tale that the NK gave the Ice Queen his seed and lost his soul; that sounds a bit like Stannis giving his seed to Melisandre for birthing the shadow babies. We have an associated obscure term white shadows. The white shadows are associated with the Others/WW specifically. But interestingly enough there is scene with another, literal, white shadow in the books. Bran tells of recollection of going down into the crypts as younger children and the trick Robb and Jon played on them. Jon covers himself in flour and creeps out of the shadows playing the part of a ghost of the King of Winter/Lord of Winterfell. ETA This is the thread actually, the discussion about the weirwood/ghost/bran/jon dream is on page 2.
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Post by min on Jul 19, 2016 16:01:17 GMT
I hadn't considered the idea of the three eyed wolf but that fits right in with all the Celtic mythology and the Morrigan. I'll re-read that scene again with your viewpoint in mind. Interesting. exemplore.com/spirit-animals/Call-Of-The-Wild-The-Wolf-In-Mythology-Power-Animaledit: added I do wonder what it means to call the Stone Kings from their graves, if that's even possible. I doubt the tombs will open up and mouldy corpses will appear. Unless we're talking about some version of Aragorn's ghost army.
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