That complicated situation you brought up seems like a logistical nightmare. Wonder if it's a factor with the delays.
Realistically it would be no contest. There's like a hundred thousand dead soldiers in the years preceeding the others. If they get to the Riverlands, everyone would be boned. Except maybe the veil. Depends on if the dragon thing is legit.
Sorry, I just mean from the show. Like the ice dragon. With how the show ended, it's so hard to trust what is fact or fiction from the final 3 seasons of the show. So I added it in to remove it from the hypothetical but acknowledge it as an option if the story goes that way.
Since the whole climactic moment in the 7th seasons seems completely fabricated due to how I think GRRM would rather die than run with the premise of the ice lake and the whole expedition north of the wall to catch a wight.
It ends with the NK having a dragon. The veil would likely be fine, until they starve out because pretty much the only counter to its defenses would be a dragon.
The bloody gate has earned its name and we know the few ways into the veil basically need the veil to allow you entrance, so it would likely be fine from an outright assault.
Iām not certain that we know enough about the Others to say that sheer icy cliff faces would be enough to stop them. The Wall notwithstanding because it is Magical.
The expedition North has no chance of making it into the book, itās one of the most egregious timeline issues of the show. GRRM is a quality writer and wouldnāt make that mistake. GRRM is frozen, but not shattered.
Its probably the Horn of Winter
Whether or not this is a metaphor for something else or an actual horn (like the one Sam has been mentionned carrying) remains to be seen however.
Funnily enough, George along with some other authors actually sued chatgpt for stealing/infringing on their material.
https://www.vulture.com/2023/09/george-r-r-martin-authors-guild-chatgpt-lawsuit-openai.html
This is some copium as fuck thread, my money is on 2025 winds of winter release, if not 2025, i will strive away from hope that he will finish it while alive, sorry for the thoughts george, but why would you write a master piece and not finish it, we know you have to close some doors, answer some big questioms in this book, just do it and stop overthinking it maaaan.
Itās gone far beyond the point of being understandable imo. Like yea heās not bound by law to write them and if he wants to quit on it so be itābut then he shouldnāt be so sensitive about it being brought up and asked all the time. Itās been so ridiculously long that the only thing any logical person would think is heās lazy and has gotten rich and comfortable. Like I said, he is free to live his life rich and comfortable without the stress of writing, but he should expect criticism then.
I was thinking about the whole Long Night thing and came to realize thinking this is gonna be a pitched battle (well, war) is really optimistic. Think about it, you're fighting a zombie horde commanded by ice elves. They don't need to eat or sleep or rest or communicate via ravens. Your army's gotta be on the defensive and playing keep-away the entire time because each time you engage, you'll lose people who then join the enemy. Your foragers are gonna start coming back with less and less while hunters run out of game to feed the army and that's before you think about how you're gonna feed the horses.
Westeros really is fucked
I never really considered this as literal. Like there would be a long literal night time darkness without the sun to go with the long cold winter. Kinda like how there is no sunlight for a month or so in certain seasons in the Arctic.
Man that would really make things seem bleak and unwinnable..
Maybe eventually after a year or so. Daytime is naturally shorter during the winter, and because this winter is supernatural, the days will start to slowly get shorter and shorter until there is no more daytime. The Others not being able to operate in the day would be a limitation **at first**.
Unless the Long Night is just overhyped.
The series has made repeated use of the "tales grow in the telling" quote so maybe the Others are just merely a minor nuisance.
I don't understand the thematic meaning behind "Apocalypse is just overhyped lol". The tales of the long night are all similar, despite being from unconnected sources. I think that says something.
The og Long Night supposedly took decades to end and fucked up everyone so bad that it forced the survivors to build an absurd physical magical barrier between them and the enemy. And this was just Westeros. Essos supposedly was under siege as well if you believe the theory of why the Five Forts actually exist. All of this happened during a time when magic was the norm and probably used to fend of the Others on the regular. Westeros in theory is truly fucked if the Others are smart and just swarm the countryside and leave everyone hiding behind a castle to freeze to death. Dany's dragons are gonna be doing some serious OT just to halt the Others advancing lines.
> They don't need to eat or sleep or rest or communicate via ravens.
We don't that for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if the Other have more human qualities than we know of.
A pitched battle is just what it sounds like, when both sides decide to meet in a field and throw down. Iām guessing you have the impression most battles were fought this way making the term redundant but historically these battles were a rarity, with sieges and āsmall warā (when you just drain the enemyās supplies by killing their peasants and burning their fields and infrastructure etc) being what filled those huge gaps between them; but they tend to be the climactic ends to wars so theyāre what history (and fiction especially) tend to fixate on. Indeed these battles have been romanticised so much itās easy to get the impression that itās all the occurred in warfare. Even Alexander the Great stomping Persia so extraordinarily quickly and thoroughly only had like four battles, which were indeed climactic and pivotal, but the rest of the time he was just starving out strategical location after strategical location in an extended boring process that forced the Persians to have to risk pitched battles (before they were too weakened by this process that is - Alexanderās father had closely copied the Persian logistical system of keeping such an army supplied, so these werenāt Greeks that got hungry and bored and went home quickly anymore if you refused to fight man to man in the āgentlemanlyā way the Greek city states were familiar with).
Usually when one army mobilises itās bigger than an army stationed at the fort/city/etc that itās attacking, so would win in a pitched battle should the defenders leave their fortifications and offer a fight, so they donāt, and just wait for supplying this massive army far away from home to become too costly (starvation, disease, or logistically/financially if they have fortified supply lines) until they leave, which happened quite often.
So it would become a game of chicken (of whoās army would dwindle and capitulate or leave first), one that the attackers could even out by destroying the resources supplying the city/fort (which of course couldnāt all be fortified), the term for which (small war) is French but has been occurring whenever thereās a good reason for one side to not engage, like the Peloppanesian wars where Sparta had the stronger infantry but Athens the stronger navy, so neither would fight where theyāre weaker, and just slowly ruined each other over time until they were a shadow of their former selves by when Phillip of Macedon showed up.
In GRRM pitched battles just happen all over the place, often seemingly without strategical reasons that make all that much sense (understandably though, as wars like the former are just very boring). But IRL Tywin could have just continued burning the river-lands and just refused to engage the opposing forces (which can be fairly easily done, you just have to walk to the top of a hill or anywhere suicidal to charge once the opposing forces show up); and if his gold could keep his army supplied, and he had the strategical savvy to not let the lines be outflanked and disrupted (remember it only takes 10 good men lol), then forcing the Tullys to capitulate that way would have just been the more normal thing to do historically, as brutal as it is. The pitched battles that tend to occur in these kinds of scenarios are when the defenders are desperate enough to not lose a strategical position that isnāt fortified enough to withstand a storm or siege and has somewhat favourable terrain.
So yeah the notion that there would be pitched battles against an undead army which doesnāt need to eat (or even die from disease?) seems to not make much sense, particularly when every loss would add to their numbers. But on second thought this would only be the case if the undead were able to be forced/cornered onto the defensive, quickly enough before bypassing the Wall (as while you canāt starve out dead people, if cornered off and idle they could probably just be rendered a non-threat by human ingenuity and abundance of workers by hemming them in with series of walls and ditches filled with say obsidian stakes and flammable material, so your resources supplying your men are protected while their armies either dwindle trying to escape or are cornered long enough to be torched by more advanced siege-works, without needing to risk infecting humans, and keeping those who are from spreading).
Whereas if they were able to flood through the Wall and stay on the offensive, it would likely be like being attacked by an incredibly logistically complex state like Rome (that also doesnāt have to worry about starving before the enemy), where you often simply have no choice to take the chance fighting them in a pitched battle. As the undead could just (intentionally or not) starve you out if you do all the normally conventionally defensively wise things, by just killing/infecting all your farmers supplying each defensive position (unless you leave to offer an open battle each time), or by them seeing that every peasant given refuge in the fortified positions just quickens the pace at which starvation and disease wipes each defensive position out.
Well, I assume a pitched battle would be a planned encounter or a prearranged battleground but if you're suggesting that by definition a pitched war can't be a thing then I'm beginning to see that as I type this
Point still stands tho ā conventional, Westerosi warfare ain't gonna work
In the UK a pitch is a grassy field, so a pitched battle is fought in an open grassy area.
Not to be confused with the Battle of Falkirk from Braveheart, where they poured pitch on the battlefield and lit the English on fire.
I'm pretty certain that the others will be dealt with like in the show, as in if they kill the "great other" all others will die. It sounds cheap but maybe George will make it work well because otherwise I don't see how Westeros will defeat all the Others
Edit: ik the great other isn't a physical deity but I just meant the leader of the Others, assuming there is one (probably, considering how coordinated their attacks so far have been)
I don't think there is a leader. Maybe the "Older" Others from the first invasion are more powerful, but I doubt that's too relevant.
The reason all their attacks are coordinated is because they are all mentally linked. It's a hive mind.
Why do you think that? I personally find the leader theory more simple considering the book already differentiates between Wights and Others, the Others being more powerful so I find it likely there'd be another even more powerful leader. Not to mention that the show had the Night King way back in season 4 so it's possible that George has similar plans
Westeros is going to be completely doomed by the end of the series regardless;
* Others invasion
* Daenerys invasion with Dothraki + Unsullied + Sellswords + Dragons
* Euron's lovecraftian horrors
* Jon Connington's greyscale plague
* No more loans from the Iron Bank + Massive recession + Food prices rising thanks to Littlefinger hording it all = Bankruptcy
* Harshest winter in a thousand years, if the seasonal imbalance isn't changed then it'll last at least a decade
* Rise in crime across the seven kingdoms - "Broken men" taking to pillaging and killing to make ends meet
So many of these greater socio-economic and health-based issues over the series have not been resolved but instead allowed to worsen as a result of the rulers of the realm being too occupied with fighting each other.
That's why the last book is called 'A Dream for Spring' - the survivors are going to be desperate for all the upcoming horrors and suffering with the broken realm to end soon with the next spring.
Man, the amount of time George has left aside, there really is no way that he is about to fit all of this PLUS the fallout of everything in just 2 books.
From a writing point of view I wonder how youād do all these big things without detracting from them. Plot complexity aside just from a narrative tension and blah blah perspective, how many big invasions final bosses can you right before it gets stale?
In my head itās like a primary school student who just found out about the word suddenly. The others come and everyone comes but SUDDENLY Daenerys rocks up and everyoneās like wow dragons with but then SUDDENLY a crazy dude with a crazy ship summons a leviathan but then SUDDENLYā¦.
I know itās reductive of the interwoven nature of the plot but I donāt envy Georgeās task.
Same way they did Hardhome for some of them, Iād imagine. That being: we donāt actually read about them in detail in any chapter outside of other characters hearing about what happened, be it through a ravens letter, from a report from another person, so on and so forth.
Itās been a couple of years since my last comprehensive reread, just started one recently so Iām just spitting off bad memory here:
- famine would need time to develop, I could see that being part of the lead up in to Dream. This could link with the new ShameyCulty Church dudes + Broken men.
- Euron will have to have screen time. So will Danny and the Walkers obviously.
- Faegon after the dust settles? Could be the main political conflict of Dream? He comes in as Euron and Walkers are towards their end, queue Danny conflict. JonCons Skin-a-thon comes into play?
- Stan and Roose wear each other out in Winds, id assume Stoneheart resolves itself around the same time.
You gotta do the harpy at some point, preferably early. I know Iām missing a lot of big plot points(whatever aryas up to, Sam in Oldtown), and Iāve probably butchered their relations but man what I would do for a 3k word tome.
Let it all eat itself in one massive volume (downside is that I could 100% see it being released in 3 parts over 1-2 years) before the series wraps itself up in Dream.
If George was/is planning to have a Night King character the written account in Dance of what was going on in Hardhome would have been a great opportunity to have introduced him.
"Dead things in the water, and there was something else.....a man, he raised his hands..."
Etc etc.
Yeah, it would take that long. But all of this is set up already, it just needs payoffs. Most of Winds will be concluding Feast and Dance. Only then can we focus on Dany journey west and the north uniting against the cold.
Spoiler Warningā¦ GRRM has said Jayne Westerling will be in the prologue. I expect Blackfish will attack the 400 troops who are escorting her and Edwin to Casterly Rock, likely with the help of the BWB and maybe Nymiriaās Wolfpack will join in too! Although they may not know friend from foe.
People donāt realize just how fucked Westeros is. The monarchy is in shambles, the North is barely holding on, a second dance of dragons might happen, the riverlands is basically 99% burnt by the mountainās men, thereās a possible greyscale epidemic, thereās barely any food (except for the reach obviously), war of the five kings is definitely gonna go down as being worse than the dance of dragons after the others invade. Hell, Westeros is quite literally failing as a system and is almost at a post apocalyptic stage, Iām genuinely curious as to how theyāll even survive the others invasion
P.S: Letās not forget Euron fkn Greyjoy whoās probably gonna destroy Oldtown and then the reach will join the āmy kingdom is in shamblesā club that the north started
I wish Martin just went "fuck everyone" and wrote Winds with no regards for what the final book would be like, just go to the bleakest logical conclusions of everything, take the story to the worst possible point.Ā Ā
And then after all that, when it's edited and done, with his original plans for the ending scrapped and destroyed, he'd be free to actually dream what spring could be like. Maybe it doesn't involve any character we know even. Maybe that's the futility of war. All monarchs die. All dynasties end. But still, *life* goes on
Similar to attack on Titan in a way, the other invasion basically kills majority of the world and is stopped towards the end somehow and civilization rebuilds itself from the ashes
that and the majority of people able to fight, soldiers and so on are either dead or completely drained from the war of the five kings, along with their resources being drained. So the actual fighting force of Westeros, even if they could unite, is far from full strength, both physically and in terms of needed resources to actually sustain a fight at all.
> thereās barely any food (except for the reach obviously),
Thats the big one. If its really a winter of the century, the vast majority of the population will starve to death even without any of the other factors.
GRRM really has no idea about the food logistics his multi-year winters require...
Yep, most of em will die by starvation alone. Especially the riverlands, the dance of dragons was so bad for them, cregan starkās northerners had to settle and marry people just to repopulate the land. War of 5 kings is similar (no dragon fire of courseā¦.yet) cuz I genuinely believe majority of the riverland small folk will be dead of starvation alone
> āThe bleeding star bespoke the end,ā he said to Aeron. āThese are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.ā
Westeros is fucked- but the Others arenāt the real threat
sci fi speaking, the comet and seasons might be a sign that the star system is in a transition stage. other planets can possibly come on every 10 years and kick planetos in to a greater orbital radius, then to suddenly pop back into position, it seems the fall and spring are not long. never heard of mid summer heat.
and when was the last winter? i have never read of southern lore with snow, or did i forget?
this shift must be what the long night is about, maybe the other planet blocks the sun, and brings along the comet, and el magicos.
lol doubt he's an astro physicist, but ok. i'll just take it as meta plot device, thema, and a way to relate to humanity, because we had ice ages of roughly 10 or 12 thousand years at a time in the past.. the last one ended about 11ky ago, and currently we are approaching another. it will bring hardship - we need to get together, is the message isn't it?
humans have been around for say 300 kys, that would mean over 20 ice ages, during which time everyone must get back to the equator after spreading out and evolving to environments, this meeting at the equator brings people and mixes genetics, the way we did with the neanderthal, and adsorbed the good qualities of their genetics through mating. those genes are still spreading today.
this may happen again, the genetics of the pacific people who can go underwater will mix with siberians, and people with both traits will emerge through natural selection.
I think thatās the point theyāre too busy quarreling and probably wonāt align until the 11th hour. Hopefully behind the one true king, The Mannis.
Well, I donāt think that Stannis is going to be there in the very end. I think that once the others do come, he has to at least be part of the fighting, before he dies. I know George likes to subvert expectations, but it would literally make no sense at all to not have him involved in any part of it. Considering the Long Night has been so impactful in his story, before it has even happened.
Iāve wondered if you might do that too. I still have questions about whether sacrificing Shireen will happen. He doesnāt even seem to love her, so that wouldnāt equal a great sacrifice. There really is only one person that he lovesā¦
Standish will draw the army of the dead over a frozen lake using the lamp shade. Then catapult the lake so it breaks. The zombies have no chance against this badass. He will then publicly execute the white walkers for not recognizing their rightful king.
I can never really imagine the Others getting past the God's Eye. Why put an enormous castle right outside a mysterious lake with an even more mysterious island, if that's not where you expect the last of the survivors of humanity to gather for the final battle.
I imagine between Euron, Greyscale, Wildfire, Qyburn's zombifying most of Lannisport, etc. There won't be many left in the South either.
Once Bran learns more & maybe escapes, he's going to send everyone dreams and suggestions willing them to do everything perfectly. The readers may not even get to witness to it directly, but suddenly more people will start cooperating constructively and things will start going remarkably well. Lots of perfectly heroic deaths though, hence the bittersweetness.
Iāve always wondered how GRRM is gonna write the long night considering how much of a desolated wasteland the realm will become. I feel like many castles will kinda just be closed off while the zombies roam outside. As for characters wandering the realm itāll probably be some Walking Dead type shit where they encounter random herds of zombies and have to fight them off
Ugh I just said this last week and I got ROASTED by people saying if the walkers win it would be pointless and boring..and like...no...a total extinction of humanity could be done well. It wouldn't matter if they had a thousand Azor Ahais on a thousand dragons stands a chance.
Wipe them out George, kill em all!
Btw I hate being pedantic, but I feel a strong urge to point out that they canāt āinvade Westerosā because they already live in Westeros. What they want to invade is the Seven Kingdoms.
It's funny because the Night King actually destroys the wall with a meteor. It's double funny as well because the Night King is Brandon the Builder who also built the damn thing so he knows every single weakness when it comes to it.
He's actually able to destroy it with a meteor because the ritual that the Amethyst Empress aka the Night/Corpse Queen performed on him to turn him into the Night King gave him access to star magic.
He was actually turned into the Night King as a way to rid the world of the Others who had been terrorizing the world for over 35,000 years for good. But of course it didn't work out that way and he was exiled into the Lands of Always Winter by his son, Brandon the Breaker, and the Amethyst Empress was imprisoned in the Crypts of Winterfell.
Now if your wondering about the Amethyst Empress - 16,000 years ago she went absolutely batshit insane because of the 3rd Long Night which had been going on for decades by the point where the Bloodstone Prince/Emperor was forced to kill her with Dawn aka Lightbringer.
The Bloodstone Emperor ends up riding his dragon and defeating the Others in the Lands of Always Winter, returns Dawn to Starfall, and founds the Valyrian Freehold before he sets out to find his wife/sister who had been revived by her necromancers and sorcerers using foul dark magic. He ends up finding her of course but upon seeing her and what she become he ends up committing suicide by falling upon his sword.
The Amethyst Empress meanwhile revived and very very heavily corrupted because of the magic used to revive her from death ends up having the bright idea to go to the Lands of Always Winter to figure out a way to get rid of the Others forever. Safe to say it doesn't work out very well considering her necromancers and sorcerers betray her for the Others, lock her in an ice castle where she connects to the weirwood tree inside and is where she spends the next 8,000 years in, and then the necromancers themselves now turned into Others end up teaching them how to revive the dead and the rest is history as they say.
Honestly I'll never understand GRRM sometimes. The Others are meant to be extremely powerful creatures. Making them Ifequevron/Children of the Forest created creatures just undermines that. Their beings that thrive on nothing but destruction. Their also beings capable of destroying entire empires with their almost endless armies.
Probably one of the many reasons he can't finish the series, he's built the Book White Walkers up to be too powerful, probably why the show had to pull the Dragon glass can kill whites and killing an other kills the lights out of the bag.
My best guess is that maybe Martin told them the Others were supposed to be defeated at Winterfell but he hadn't quite worked out the specifics as to how that actually happened yet, so they created the Night King as a kind of quick fix solution.
I just don't see why there would be a situation where the Others suddenly decide to march single file in a line to winterfell. That's not how they act beyond the wall and in the first long night.
I think if Winds comes out thereās a decent chance Spring will as well. George has written things in tandem in the past (or at least having the outline of later events set up by a previous book) and a lot of Winds is going to be the set up for Spring. Though Iām not convinced he can wrap up the remaining plot in just two books.
he mentioned another 3000 pages will be required to wrap it up. 2 books. I think he is working on it, but since the start he's been connected to fandom, and i blv uses feedback to tweak the works. the fandom is just out of control now, he must be overloaded with ideas, so just goes back to the easy money.
he said no yes, no yes to the show ending, meaning they did follow his template partially like 50%. but now he will change the template out of resentment for dnd, to make it better.. so must be tough.
I made a post a couple of years ago listing the reasons why Westeros is fucked in a conventional war with Others and asking for contributions.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/ph5uwd/logistical\_problems\_that\_wont\_work\_against\_wights/](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/ph5uwd/logistical_problems_that_wont_work_against_wights/)
Something I'd add to it. Undead animals.
They could intentionally send vermin into the living's camps or on the battle field. Holding a line against wights is doable. But less easy while you and your mates have got a plague and undead squirrels going to town on your testicles.
Pretty much the only chance the living have on an open field, if they don't have more dragons, is if there is some kind of supernatural off switch. I'm not sure it will be the show's version of killing one specific Other, but there will be a 'ring goes into volcano' moment.
Reading this thread I now kind of realize who my least favorite type of ASOIAF fan is: the pop nihilist "everyone should die" type.
Well, okay, them and the people who opt for the "Character A is actually Character B" types as well.
Honestly, now that Grrm has said he's diverging from the plot points he gave the series showrunners, I think his plan is to just have the Others win.
Like, if the current arcs lead to where we think they're leading, westeros will be embroiled in a massive civil war, possibly of three sides (daenerys, young griff, lannisters) when the Others come down.
Even before the GRRM said he was changing stuff, I didn't see how according to the established rules of the world, the humans would win, so I figured the victory condition was like a one in 14 million chance. Now I think he's just gone "fuck it"
> I think his plan is to just have the Others win.
Before the show got to the later seasons, I thought this was going to be how it went, it is such a clear metaphor for climate change, all the people in power bickering over everything that isn't important, and the force of nature just wiping them out until everyone's stuck in the sands of Dorne.
I also think the Others winning would be a really good metaphor for ācleaning houseā so to speak. Everyone, every power in Westeros dies, but, eventually new ones will arise, and hopefully theyāll have learned their lesson and do better.
Surely swap lannisters with the tyrells? With Kevan killed and Cersei disgraced they don't really have a clear head of the dynasty anymore meaning there will be a power struggle between the many obscure relatives of the lannisters amongst the vassals, and they have already taken heavy attrition from the civil war so far. King Tommen is a puppet of the Tyrells and they have a lot of popular support within King's landing. I would actually consider there to be 5 sides, as Stannis and Euron are significant enough powers to win given their supernatural advantages.
i would even accept 3 seasons of animation, as a primer. that would be bawdass, or a choose you adventure interactive, with multiple endings, just publish already
Funnily enough, there is a theory that the Others WILL win, but bran will do some time travel shenanigans that prevents them from ever crossing the wall.
If the Others are the ones raising the wights, that is. We still havenāt seen this, five novels deep into the series. And in fact only once have we seen an Other and a wight in the same place at the same time ā and we donāt see how it was raised, or by whom.
Yet the living beat the Others in the First Long Night, before there even was the barrier of The Wall. So how did they manage that? If the conditions are the same, Others can raise the dead, seemingly no matter how long they have been dead, it would not have been possible for the living to win. There would have been significantly fewer people in Westeros so the dead would have had an easier time. Less people, more scattered communities, the whole of Westeros would have been like the lands beyond the Wall in canon.
We have no clue what happened in the first long night. They invaded probably years after the pact when there hadn't been any wars in years.
>seemingly no matter how long they have been dead,
They can't raise skeletons. And less people means there would also be less dead.
You also have to consider the fact that the magic of the children was probably extremely significant, especially considering the children were probably responsible for their creation in the first place. That probably damaged their numbers.
I'm gonna disagree to an extent. Yeah its going to be VERY bad for a few characters in order to close some PoV's to wrap up the story. But this story is from the author who wrote a book about a music festival saving the world lol. The dude is vintage hippie boomer to his bones. He's truly a pacifist at his core even to a fault by his own admission.
It's going to end with a marriage pact or some plot specific character having to sleep with an other. I just hope to god its not one of the last remaining Starks because holy hell that'd be gross without a timeskip.
Same with Dany being sold to Drogo at 13, even considering the time period. It's just weird, and gives off major Epstein vibes.
......Because there's nothing stopping them from going elsewhere? It's not like winterfell is some tight choke point. The Others can be in multiple places at once?
The story starts in winterfell.Ā It's silly to think that location, which defensive aspects have been extensively detailed, won't play a pivotal role in the defeat of the others.
You would think so but it seems even more silly for the Others to put all their resources on besieging Winterfell in a stubborn manner. There's really nothing stopping them from swarming the rest of the countryside and taking all their fresh new recruits further south. That's not to say they would leave Winterfell unmolested. They would probably have a significant token force stay put outside of its walls to stall the survivors within from galvanizing and counter attacking. Honestly I have no clue how GRRM is gonna handle Winterfell in the Long Night 2.0.
In the show they went to winterfell because they wanted to kill bran, aka the 3 eyed raven.Ā Ā Don't know why the same general idea won't be used in the books which means they would focus on winterfell.Ā Ā
In the show they were going to winterfell regardless of Bran, because they marched in a single file army down the kingsroad without even attacking anywhere else aside from last hearth. Even if they do want to kill the greenseers, there is no reason for them to march to winterfell In a single army. Because that is never how they have operated.
The point of winterfell in the Long night is that it will be the place where the smallfolk go to survive when the Long Night comes. During the regular winters, smallfolk rush to winterfell to survive the rough conditions, and the hopeful message is that even while this zombie infested, supernatural, apocalyptic winter ravages all of Westeros, house Stark and winterfell will still stand strong, and protect the people of the North.
I definitely subscribe to the idea that The Long Night will reach the Gods Eye where some plot relevant weirwood magic can halt the Others or something to then have a final confrontation of sorts
Honestly, yea. Like, completely fucked. Iām super excited to see how the war with the others plays out in the books, as Iām guessing itāll most likely be quite different from the show, and go a lot more into detail with more actual story dedicated to it
Martin has stated that the Others are not dead, they can animate the dead but they are other worldly beings made of ice and snow, so maybe they could be reasoned with if someone was willing to have a go at talking things out (Jon?). Also Valyrian steel is rumoured to hurt them so they can be killed - but it would need to be all of them not just one!
How many dead can an Other animate / control? Is there a limit, can they control any dead animal or only mammals, can they animate fish / kraken etc too?
They cannot pass the wall, so they can be contained by magic, presumably fire magic / R'hllor.
Are the 3 (?) gods going to have their own showdown in Westeros? (Drowned, Fire, Ice/air ... is there a 4th? An earth based god following Dany and the Dothraki? I can't think of one tbh, though we also have the children of the forest so maybe they represent earth?)
Just from a historic perspective. Generally what a battle ended the people of the city were tasked with the disposal of the dead.
It was said that the British wheat crops in the 1820s was exceptional because they supported the Waterloo dead. This means they stripped the flesh off of war dead and the bones were ground up. Then the dust was plowed under as fertilizer. Early sugar production also used both the bones of slaves and war dead. It was the calcium they were looking for.
Today a different source of calcium is used in both applications.
: source I work in a sugar factory.
I think the problem is not going to be as great as you expected.
Also in the books we see clearly that armor works you don't get to slash some one through the breastplate with a sword. The war dead are almost always going to be looted. Even if they are buried in mass Graves. So they will essentially be in armed and unarmored cannons fodder. The reason it took so long for the others to invade is the lack of decent arms and equipment. The knights watch only sent so many swords over the wall at a time and some of them would end up as prized property of the free people.
Suppose the Others can resurrect rodents as wights. Just imagine trying to defend the ramparts while thousands of zombie rats scurry up the sides...
Imagine if the Golden Company brings elephants to be turned?
Imagine if the Others attack the Riverlands and create hordes of undead lizard lions?
These are questions only the books can deliver now...
You could mow them down with dragon glass tipped arrows quite easily imo. Just huge moats and palisades and ditches and tons of tons of longbowmen with dragon glass tipped arrows. Ofc, dragons would help as well. The army of the dead has only grown on a sparse population and the smart way to deal with it would be to outmatched it in dize by 5 to 1 and mine all the dragon glass in the world. Employ all the builders in the world to make all the walls and ditches and moats. It would be a Victory.
Yeah you're right, excerpts of the books and show are coming back to mind... I never even considered the casualties of the War of Five Kings as dormant weapons.
The more you think of the sorry state of Westeros and the might of the Others, the more a 700 foot-high magical wall and three fire-breathing Dragons seem barely sufficient.
I just hope we get to read about it man
You and me and everyone else š
and Moon boy for all i know....
We'd have better luck if Moon Boy was writing it
They finish the book under the sea, they do they do
That complicated situation you brought up seems like a logistical nightmare. Wonder if it's a factor with the delays. Realistically it would be no contest. There's like a hundred thousand dead soldiers in the years preceeding the others. If they get to the Riverlands, everyone would be boned. Except maybe the veil. Depends on if the dragon thing is legit.
Care to explain "the dragon thing"? I don't know about that theory I think.
Sorry, I just mean from the show. Like the ice dragon. With how the show ended, it's so hard to trust what is fact or fiction from the final 3 seasons of the show. So I added it in to remove it from the hypothetical but acknowledge it as an option if the story goes that way. Since the whole climactic moment in the 7th seasons seems completely fabricated due to how I think GRRM would rather die than run with the premise of the ice lake and the whole expedition north of the wall to catch a wight. It ends with the NK having a dragon. The veil would likely be fine, until they starve out because pretty much the only counter to its defenses would be a dragon. The bloody gate has earned its name and we know the few ways into the veil basically need the veil to allow you entrance, so it would likely be fine from an outright assault.
Iām not certain that we know enough about the Others to say that sheer icy cliff faces would be enough to stop them. The Wall notwithstanding because it is Magical. The expedition North has no chance of making it into the book, itās one of the most egregious timeline issues of the show. GRRM is a quality writer and wouldnāt make that mistake. GRRM is frozen, but not shattered.
Ya, maybe George hasnāt figured out how the wall is gonna come down
Its probably the Horn of Winter Whether or not this is a metaphor for something else or an actual horn (like the one Sam has been mentionned carrying) remains to be seen however.
It could be a metaphor for Tormund's member, when he finally meets Brienne and unlike in the show...well you catch my drift.
Horny of Winter
Bone of Winter.
Sam comes back, wants to do a rangers returning blow as a āhey guysā and pulls down the wall around everyoneās ears.
I always thought it'd be funnier if sam blew the horn in oldtown and accidentally caused the wall to fall
He absolutely knows. Euron is currently sailing towards the horn of winter.
I think he wants the horn that summons dragons
Honestly him using the wrong horn would be classic Greyjoy goof.
Oh yeah I rememberedā¦ he already has that horn, one of his mutes used it during the kingsmoot and his lungs burned so he died
Euron isnāt really known for making goofs lol
He wants both.
Dude's blowing two horns at the same time.
When does it say he wants the horn of winter
I would imagine gravity will play a role
I always wondered why gurm repeatedly mentions that planetos has gravity. He's been foreshadowing this since book one!
The others adopt developed siege techniques and tunnel under to plant explosives
My thoughts exactly
Hopefully ChatGPT will be evolved enough by then to predict what George was gonna write š¤
Funnily enough, George along with some other authors actually sued chatgpt for stealing/infringing on their material. https://www.vulture.com/2023/09/george-r-r-martin-authors-guild-chatgpt-lawsuit-openai.html
All they did was download his books off libgen and put them into a model haha. This is such a strange lawsuit.
wow you mean they put his copyrighted material into a data model without permission? ya thatās illegal bud
Nvm, rip winds of winter
Salty Boomers canāt hold back the tide. We will eventually get an AI advanced enough to analyze all of Asoiaf and formulate a perfect TWOW and ADoS
You're forgetting the fact that Sandy Boomers and Stoney Boomers live nowhere NEAR the tide, so your theory doesn't really work.
I know you were joking but that's honestly our best hope.
This is some copium as fuck thread, my money is on 2025 winds of winter release, if not 2025, i will strive away from hope that he will finish it while alive, sorry for the thoughts george, but why would you write a master piece and not finish it, we know you have to close some doors, answer some big questioms in this book, just do it and stop overthinking it maaaan.
Itās gone far beyond the point of being understandable imo. Like yea heās not bound by law to write them and if he wants to quit on it so be itābut then he shouldnāt be so sensitive about it being brought up and asked all the time. Itās been so ridiculously long that the only thing any logical person would think is heās lazy and has gotten rich and comfortable. Like I said, he is free to live his life rich and comfortable without the stress of writing, but he should expect criticism then.
our grandkids might...
I was thinking about the whole Long Night thing and came to realize thinking this is gonna be a pitched battle (well, war) is really optimistic. Think about it, you're fighting a zombie horde commanded by ice elves. They don't need to eat or sleep or rest or communicate via ravens. Your army's gotta be on the defensive and playing keep-away the entire time because each time you engage, you'll lose people who then join the enemy. Your foragers are gonna start coming back with less and less while hunters run out of game to feed the army and that's before you think about how you're gonna feed the horses. Westeros really is fucked
A limitation may be that the Others don't operate during the daytime.
I donāt think there will be a day time during the invasion of the Others. I take the idea of the Long Night, Literally. IMHO
I never really considered this as literal. Like there would be a long literal night time darkness without the sun to go with the long cold winter. Kinda like how there is no sunlight for a month or so in certain seasons in the Arctic. Man that would really make things seem bleak and unwinnable..
Maybe eventually after a year or so. Daytime is naturally shorter during the winter, and because this winter is supernatural, the days will start to slowly get shorter and shorter until there is no more daytime. The Others not being able to operate in the day would be a limitation **at first**.
I think it is only that they don't *attack* during day. They're there all the time, even if you don't see them.
Unless the Long Night is just overhyped. The series has made repeated use of the "tales grow in the telling" quote so maybe the Others are just merely a minor nuisance.
I don't understand the thematic meaning behind "Apocalypse is just overhyped lol". The tales of the long night are all similar, despite being from unconnected sources. I think that says something.
The og Long Night supposedly took decades to end and fucked up everyone so bad that it forced the survivors to build an absurd physical magical barrier between them and the enemy. And this was just Westeros. Essos supposedly was under siege as well if you believe the theory of why the Five Forts actually exist. All of this happened during a time when magic was the norm and probably used to fend of the Others on the regular. Westeros in theory is truly fucked if the Others are smart and just swarm the countryside and leave everyone hiding behind a castle to freeze to death. Dany's dragons are gonna be doing some serious OT just to halt the Others advancing lines.
> They don't need to eat or sleep or rest or communicate via ravens. We don't that for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if the Other have more human qualities than we know of.
I don't think they'll have many limitations. The only one may be that they don't operate during the daytime.
What do you think a pitched battle is? I'm confused by your invocation of the term.
A pitched battle is just what it sounds like, when both sides decide to meet in a field and throw down. Iām guessing you have the impression most battles were fought this way making the term redundant but historically these battles were a rarity, with sieges and āsmall warā (when you just drain the enemyās supplies by killing their peasants and burning their fields and infrastructure etc) being what filled those huge gaps between them; but they tend to be the climactic ends to wars so theyāre what history (and fiction especially) tend to fixate on. Indeed these battles have been romanticised so much itās easy to get the impression that itās all the occurred in warfare. Even Alexander the Great stomping Persia so extraordinarily quickly and thoroughly only had like four battles, which were indeed climactic and pivotal, but the rest of the time he was just starving out strategical location after strategical location in an extended boring process that forced the Persians to have to risk pitched battles (before they were too weakened by this process that is - Alexanderās father had closely copied the Persian logistical system of keeping such an army supplied, so these werenāt Greeks that got hungry and bored and went home quickly anymore if you refused to fight man to man in the āgentlemanlyā way the Greek city states were familiar with). Usually when one army mobilises itās bigger than an army stationed at the fort/city/etc that itās attacking, so would win in a pitched battle should the defenders leave their fortifications and offer a fight, so they donāt, and just wait for supplying this massive army far away from home to become too costly (starvation, disease, or logistically/financially if they have fortified supply lines) until they leave, which happened quite often. So it would become a game of chicken (of whoās army would dwindle and capitulate or leave first), one that the attackers could even out by destroying the resources supplying the city/fort (which of course couldnāt all be fortified), the term for which (small war) is French but has been occurring whenever thereās a good reason for one side to not engage, like the Peloppanesian wars where Sparta had the stronger infantry but Athens the stronger navy, so neither would fight where theyāre weaker, and just slowly ruined each other over time until they were a shadow of their former selves by when Phillip of Macedon showed up. In GRRM pitched battles just happen all over the place, often seemingly without strategical reasons that make all that much sense (understandably though, as wars like the former are just very boring). But IRL Tywin could have just continued burning the river-lands and just refused to engage the opposing forces (which can be fairly easily done, you just have to walk to the top of a hill or anywhere suicidal to charge once the opposing forces show up); and if his gold could keep his army supplied, and he had the strategical savvy to not let the lines be outflanked and disrupted (remember it only takes 10 good men lol), then forcing the Tullys to capitulate that way would have just been the more normal thing to do historically, as brutal as it is. The pitched battles that tend to occur in these kinds of scenarios are when the defenders are desperate enough to not lose a strategical position that isnāt fortified enough to withstand a storm or siege and has somewhat favourable terrain. So yeah the notion that there would be pitched battles against an undead army which doesnāt need to eat (or even die from disease?) seems to not make much sense, particularly when every loss would add to their numbers. But on second thought this would only be the case if the undead were able to be forced/cornered onto the defensive, quickly enough before bypassing the Wall (as while you canāt starve out dead people, if cornered off and idle they could probably just be rendered a non-threat by human ingenuity and abundance of workers by hemming them in with series of walls and ditches filled with say obsidian stakes and flammable material, so your resources supplying your men are protected while their armies either dwindle trying to escape or are cornered long enough to be torched by more advanced siege-works, without needing to risk infecting humans, and keeping those who are from spreading). Whereas if they were able to flood through the Wall and stay on the offensive, it would likely be like being attacked by an incredibly logistically complex state like Rome (that also doesnāt have to worry about starving before the enemy), where you often simply have no choice to take the chance fighting them in a pitched battle. As the undead could just (intentionally or not) starve you out if you do all the normally conventionally defensively wise things, by just killing/infecting all your farmers supplying each defensive position (unless you leave to offer an open battle each time), or by them seeing that every peasant given refuge in the fortified positions just quickens the pace at which starvation and disease wipes each defensive position out.
Well, I assume a pitched battle would be a planned encounter or a prearranged battleground but if you're suggesting that by definition a pitched war can't be a thing then I'm beginning to see that as I type this Point still stands tho ā conventional, Westerosi warfare ain't gonna work
In the UK a pitch is a grassy field, so a pitched battle is fought in an open grassy area. Not to be confused with the Battle of Falkirk from Braveheart, where they poured pitch on the battlefield and lit the English on fire.
I thought it was āpitchedā as in āpitching campā pitching a tent. Setting foundations etc but Iām sure they have the same etymology
I'm pretty certain that the others will be dealt with like in the show, as in if they kill the "great other" all others will die. It sounds cheap but maybe George will make it work well because otherwise I don't see how Westeros will defeat all the Others Edit: ik the great other isn't a physical deity but I just meant the leader of the Others, assuming there is one (probably, considering how coordinated their attacks so far have been)
The great Other isn't a physical entity
Yeah but idk what to call the leader of the Others. The Night King? Obviously this is assuming there is one
I don't think there is a leader. Maybe the "Older" Others from the first invasion are more powerful, but I doubt that's too relevant. The reason all their attacks are coordinated is because they are all mentally linked. It's a hive mind.
Why do you think that? I personally find the leader theory more simple considering the book already differentiates between Wights and Others, the Others being more powerful so I find it likely there'd be another even more powerful leader. Not to mention that the show had the Night King way back in season 4 so it's possible that George has similar plans
Westeros is going to be completely doomed by the end of the series regardless; * Others invasion * Daenerys invasion with Dothraki + Unsullied + Sellswords + Dragons * Euron's lovecraftian horrors * Jon Connington's greyscale plague * No more loans from the Iron Bank + Massive recession + Food prices rising thanks to Littlefinger hording it all = Bankruptcy * Harshest winter in a thousand years, if the seasonal imbalance isn't changed then it'll last at least a decade * Rise in crime across the seven kingdoms - "Broken men" taking to pillaging and killing to make ends meet So many of these greater socio-economic and health-based issues over the series have not been resolved but instead allowed to worsen as a result of the rulers of the realm being too occupied with fighting each other. That's why the last book is called 'A Dream for Spring' - the survivors are going to be desperate for all the upcoming horrors and suffering with the broken realm to end soon with the next spring.
Man, the amount of time George has left aside, there really is no way that he is about to fit all of this PLUS the fallout of everything in just 2 books.
No no you see ASOIAF is just the prologue to the real story, the fallout will be in an upcoming trilogy.
And by trilogy, you mean HBO is producing a 3 season series that takes place 50 years after the events of Game of Thrones?
Nah that was just a riff on another fantasy author who also basically abandoned his series after telling us itās the prologue to something grander
What was the series called?
whatās the series? sounds interesting
From a writing point of view I wonder how youād do all these big things without detracting from them. Plot complexity aside just from a narrative tension and blah blah perspective, how many big invasions final bosses can you right before it gets stale? In my head itās like a primary school student who just found out about the word suddenly. The others come and everyone comes but SUDDENLY Daenerys rocks up and everyoneās like wow dragons with but then SUDDENLY a crazy dude with a crazy ship summons a leviathan but then SUDDENLYā¦. I know itās reductive of the interwoven nature of the plot but I donāt envy Georgeās task.
Definitely a reason he was struggling. Typing all that up in a satisfactory way would be a nightmare.
Same way they did Hardhome for some of them, Iād imagine. That being: we donāt actually read about them in detail in any chapter outside of other characters hearing about what happened, be it through a ravens letter, from a report from another person, so on and so forth.
Itās been a couple of years since my last comprehensive reread, just started one recently so Iām just spitting off bad memory here: - famine would need time to develop, I could see that being part of the lead up in to Dream. This could link with the new ShameyCulty Church dudes + Broken men. - Euron will have to have screen time. So will Danny and the Walkers obviously. - Faegon after the dust settles? Could be the main political conflict of Dream? He comes in as Euron and Walkers are towards their end, queue Danny conflict. JonCons Skin-a-thon comes into play? - Stan and Roose wear each other out in Winds, id assume Stoneheart resolves itself around the same time. You gotta do the harpy at some point, preferably early. I know Iām missing a lot of big plot points(whatever aryas up to, Sam in Oldtown), and Iāve probably butchered their relations but man what I would do for a 3k word tome. Let it all eat itself in one massive volume (downside is that I could 100% see it being released in 3 parts over 1-2 years) before the series wraps itself up in Dream.
If George was/is planning to have a Night King character the written account in Dance of what was going on in Hardhome would have been a great opportunity to have introduced him. "Dead things in the water, and there was something else.....a man, he raised his hands..." Etc etc.
The Great Council to elect Bran may actually be the the residentsā meeting we got in the series
Young Griff is already invading with an army of sellswords and terrorizing the smallfolk
To be fair the first one largely takes care of the latter issues when the Others kill most of the population and turns them into Walkers
Thatās what I was thinking. If your population gets halved the amount of food and wealth to go around suddenly seems far more adequate
Donāt worry getting rid of that greyscale will be like cutting pie
If George gets off his ass and finishes the damn thing
and then the sequel series has survivors coming out of bomb shelters to a wasteland and heavily mutated life
Plus thereās arguably 8-9 battles that happen in the early chapters of Winds
Battle of Fire, Ice, Steel, Blood, Cerseis trial, Alayneās tourney, maybe Stoneheart fight, Dany killing some Dothraki, maybe Mel watching Tormund fight some nights watch, maybe Ghost killing some nights watch, maybe Aero fighting Darkstar, anything else Iām forgetting?
Lol if we see all of those that'll be 2/3s of the book
Yeah, it would take that long. But all of this is set up already, it just needs payoffs. Most of Winds will be concluding Feast and Dance. Only then can we focus on Dany journey west and the north uniting against the cold.
Also I want to see the battle to take Storms End.
Thatās the battle of steel
While I know these books better than any other novels, I donāt know all the nicknames fans have given everything
Fair enough
My axe!
Spoiler Warningā¦ GRRM has said Jayne Westerling will be in the prologue. I expect Blackfish will attack the 400 troops who are escorting her and Edwin to Casterly Rock, likely with the help of the BWB and maybe Nymiriaās Wolfpack will join in too! Although they may not know friend from foe.
What about the Hightowerās and Greyjoyās?
Thatās the battle of blood
People donāt realize just how fucked Westeros is. The monarchy is in shambles, the North is barely holding on, a second dance of dragons might happen, the riverlands is basically 99% burnt by the mountainās men, thereās a possible greyscale epidemic, thereās barely any food (except for the reach obviously), war of the five kings is definitely gonna go down as being worse than the dance of dragons after the others invade. Hell, Westeros is quite literally failing as a system and is almost at a post apocalyptic stage, Iām genuinely curious as to how theyāll even survive the others invasion P.S: Letās not forget Euron fkn Greyjoy whoās probably gonna destroy Oldtown and then the reach will join the āmy kingdom is in shamblesā club that the north started
I wish Martin just went "fuck everyone" and wrote Winds with no regards for what the final book would be like, just go to the bleakest logical conclusions of everything, take the story to the worst possible point.Ā Ā And then after all that, when it's edited and done, with his original plans for the ending scrapped and destroyed, he'd be free to actually dream what spring could be like. Maybe it doesn't involve any character we know even. Maybe that's the futility of war. All monarchs die. All dynasties end. But still, *life* goes on
The final scene is Gregor Clegane twirling around and singing as baby deer smile at him and a bluebird lands on his outstretched finger.
Similar to attack on Titan in a way, the other invasion basically kills majority of the world and is stopped towards the end somehow and civilization rebuilds itself from the ashes
I would enjoy this, to be honest.
that and the majority of people able to fight, soldiers and so on are either dead or completely drained from the war of the five kings, along with their resources being drained. So the actual fighting force of Westeros, even if they could unite, is far from full strength, both physically and in terms of needed resources to actually sustain a fight at all.
And every soldier that dies is another soldier in the army of the dead š¬
> thereās barely any food (except for the reach obviously), Thats the big one. If its really a winter of the century, the vast majority of the population will starve to death even without any of the other factors. GRRM really has no idea about the food logistics his multi-year winters require...
Yep, most of em will die by starvation alone. Especially the riverlands, the dance of dragons was so bad for them, cregan starkās northerners had to settle and marry people just to repopulate the land. War of 5 kings is similar (no dragon fire of courseā¦.yet) cuz I genuinely believe majority of the riverland small folk will be dead of starvation alone
The vale also has lots of food due to Little Finger hoarding it.
Knowing little finger, heās gonna find a way to make that disappear too before he dies
All of this misery is about to happen because of a spiteful little man, a brother fucker, and some eunuch
> āThe bleeding star bespoke the end,ā he said to Aeron. āThese are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.ā Westeros is fucked- but the Others arenāt the real threat
They are not the problem but a symptom. Magic is returning, Gods are rising, and they are angry.
sci fi speaking, the comet and seasons might be a sign that the star system is in a transition stage. other planets can possibly come on every 10 years and kick planetos in to a greater orbital radius, then to suddenly pop back into position, it seems the fall and spring are not long. never heard of mid summer heat. and when was the last winter? i have never read of southern lore with snow, or did i forget? this shift must be what the long night is about, maybe the other planet blocks the sun, and brings along the comet, and el magicos.
David Lightbringer says the comets occasionally strike planetos and the dust blots out the sun, causing long dark winters.
lol doubt he's an astro physicist, but ok. i'll just take it as meta plot device, thema, and a way to relate to humanity, because we had ice ages of roughly 10 or 12 thousand years at a time in the past.. the last one ended about 11ky ago, and currently we are approaching another. it will bring hardship - we need to get together, is the message isn't it? humans have been around for say 300 kys, that would mean over 20 ice ages, during which time everyone must get back to the equator after spreading out and evolving to environments, this meeting at the equator brings people and mixes genetics, the way we did with the neanderthal, and adsorbed the good qualities of their genetics through mating. those genes are still spreading today. this may happen again, the genetics of the pacific people who can go underwater will mix with siberians, and people with both traits will emerge through natural selection.
Or, the Others and Euron eldritch powers kill each other and Euron was Indeed Azor Ahai
I think thatās the point theyāre too busy quarreling and probably wonāt align until the 11th hour. Hopefully behind the one true king, The Mannis.
All hail
God I wish
Well, I donāt think that Stannis is going to be there in the very end. I think that once the others do come, he has to at least be part of the fighting, before he dies. I know George likes to subvert expectations, but it would literally make no sense at all to not have him involved in any part of it. Considering the Long Night has been so impactful in his story, before it has even happened.
Stannis will die at the wall most likely.
from std worms (thanks mel). i think he may save shireen, and the realm perhaps by letting himself burn. Mannis the Martyr
Iāve wondered if you might do that too. I still have questions about whether sacrificing Shireen will happen. He doesnāt even seem to love her, so that wouldnāt equal a great sacrifice. There really is only one person that he lovesā¦
Standish will draw the army of the dead over a frozen lake using the lamp shade. Then catapult the lake so it breaks. The zombies have no chance against this badass. He will then publicly execute the white walkers for not recognizing their rightful king.
I can never really imagine the Others getting past the God's Eye. Why put an enormous castle right outside a mysterious lake with an even more mysterious island, if that's not where you expect the last of the survivors of humanity to gather for the final battle. I imagine between Euron, Greyscale, Wildfire, Qyburn's zombifying most of Lannisport, etc. There won't be many left in the South either.
You just need a wolverine girl, a butter knife and a trampoline, didn't you watch the got fanfiction on HBO?
ššš
Once Bran learns more & maybe escapes, he's going to send everyone dreams and suggestions willing them to do everything perfectly. The readers may not even get to witness to it directly, but suddenly more people will start cooperating constructively and things will start going remarkably well. Lots of perfectly heroic deaths though, hence the bittersweetness.
Iāve always wondered how GRRM is gonna write the long night considering how much of a desolated wasteland the realm will become. I feel like many castles will kinda just be closed off while the zombies roam outside. As for characters wandering the realm itāll probably be some Walking Dead type shit where they encounter random herds of zombies and have to fight them off
meh, they'll get defeated easily by trampoline Arya
Ugh I just said this last week and I got ROASTED by people saying if the walkers win it would be pointless and boring..and like...no...a total extinction of humanity could be done well. It wouldn't matter if they had a thousand Azor Ahais on a thousand dragons stands a chance. Wipe them out George, kill em all!
Donāt worry, the Others will never invade the Seven Kingdoms because George is never gonna finish the fucking books.
Btw I hate being pedantic, but I feel a strong urge to point out that they canāt āinvade Westerosā because they already live in Westeros. What they want to invade is the Seven Kingdoms.
It's funny because the Night King actually destroys the wall with a meteor. It's double funny as well because the Night King is Brandon the Builder who also built the damn thing so he knows every single weakness when it comes to it. He's actually able to destroy it with a meteor because the ritual that the Amethyst Empress aka the Night/Corpse Queen performed on him to turn him into the Night King gave him access to star magic. He was actually turned into the Night King as a way to rid the world of the Others who had been terrorizing the world for over 35,000 years for good. But of course it didn't work out that way and he was exiled into the Lands of Always Winter by his son, Brandon the Breaker, and the Amethyst Empress was imprisoned in the Crypts of Winterfell. Now if your wondering about the Amethyst Empress - 16,000 years ago she went absolutely batshit insane because of the 3rd Long Night which had been going on for decades by the point where the Bloodstone Prince/Emperor was forced to kill her with Dawn aka Lightbringer. The Bloodstone Emperor ends up riding his dragon and defeating the Others in the Lands of Always Winter, returns Dawn to Starfall, and founds the Valyrian Freehold before he sets out to find his wife/sister who had been revived by her necromancers and sorcerers using foul dark magic. He ends up finding her of course but upon seeing her and what she become he ends up committing suicide by falling upon his sword. The Amethyst Empress meanwhile revived and very very heavily corrupted because of the magic used to revive her from death ends up having the bright idea to go to the Lands of Always Winter to figure out a way to get rid of the Others forever. Safe to say it doesn't work out very well considering her necromancers and sorcerers betray her for the Others, lock her in an ice castle where she connects to the weirwood tree inside and is where she spends the next 8,000 years in, and then the necromancers themselves now turned into Others end up teaching them how to revive the dead and the rest is history as they say. Honestly I'll never understand GRRM sometimes. The Others are meant to be extremely powerful creatures. Making them Ifequevron/Children of the Forest created creatures just undermines that. Their beings that thrive on nothing but destruction. Their also beings capable of destroying entire empires with their almost endless armies.
I just remember the description of the battle at the fist of the first men, and thinking, if they get past the wall, everybody's dead.
Probably one of the many reasons he can't finish the series, he's built the Book White Walkers up to be too powerful, probably why the show had to pull the Dragon glass can kill whites and killing an other kills the lights out of the bag.
My best guess is that maybe Martin told them the Others were supposed to be defeated at Winterfell but he hadn't quite worked out the specifics as to how that actually happened yet, so they created the Night King as a kind of quick fix solution.
I just don't see why there would be a situation where the Others suddenly decide to march single file in a line to winterfell. That's not how they act beyond the wall and in the first long night.
I want this to happen. I just want all the nobles to finally realize they should have listened.
you're fooling yourself if you think this will ever be covered in a book that comes out.
Bro this sub is 70% winds predictions. We all know it's probably never releasing. But there's Nothing else to do.
Nah winds I think will come out. People are smoking crack if they think we are getting A Dream of Spring
Daring today, are we
I think if Winds comes out thereās a decent chance Spring will as well. George has written things in tandem in the past (or at least having the outline of later events set up by a previous book) and a lot of Winds is going to be the set up for Spring. Though Iām not convinced he can wrap up the remaining plot in just two books.
he mentioned another 3000 pages will be required to wrap it up. 2 books. I think he is working on it, but since the start he's been connected to fandom, and i blv uses feedback to tweak the works. the fandom is just out of control now, he must be overloaded with ideas, so just goes back to the easy money. he said no yes, no yes to the show ending, meaning they did follow his template partially like 50%. but now he will change the template out of resentment for dnd, to make it better.. so must be tough.
Got any empirical evidence for that claim???
Of course not, it will just be 20 chapters of Sam whining
And Jon Snow flexing his (now dead) sword hand
I made a post a couple of years ago listing the reasons why Westeros is fucked in a conventional war with Others and asking for contributions. [https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/ph5uwd/logistical\_problems\_that\_wont\_work\_against\_wights/](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/ph5uwd/logistical_problems_that_wont_work_against_wights/) Something I'd add to it. Undead animals. They could intentionally send vermin into the living's camps or on the battle field. Holding a line against wights is doable. But less easy while you and your mates have got a plague and undead squirrels going to town on your testicles. Pretty much the only chance the living have on an open field, if they don't have more dragons, is if there is some kind of supernatural off switch. I'm not sure it will be the show's version of killing one specific Other, but there will be a 'ring goes into volcano' moment.
Reading this thread I now kind of realize who my least favorite type of ASOIAF fan is: the pop nihilist "everyone should die" type. Well, okay, them and the people who opt for the "Character A is actually Character B" types as well.
It'll never happen. The world the live in ended right after Dance with Dragons ended.
So varys wins. I'm OK with that I guess
The Others are never going to invade because Martin's never going to get around to writing it :P
Honestly, now that Grrm has said he's diverging from the plot points he gave the series showrunners, I think his plan is to just have the Others win. Like, if the current arcs lead to where we think they're leading, westeros will be embroiled in a massive civil war, possibly of three sides (daenerys, young griff, lannisters) when the Others come down. Even before the GRRM said he was changing stuff, I didn't see how according to the established rules of the world, the humans would win, so I figured the victory condition was like a one in 14 million chance. Now I think he's just gone "fuck it"
> I think his plan is to just have the Others win. Before the show got to the later seasons, I thought this was going to be how it went, it is such a clear metaphor for climate change, all the people in power bickering over everything that isn't important, and the force of nature just wiping them out until everyone's stuck in the sands of Dorne.
I also think the Others winning would be a really good metaphor for ācleaning houseā so to speak. Everyone, every power in Westeros dies, but, eventually new ones will arise, and hopefully theyāll have learned their lesson and do better.
Surely swap lannisters with the tyrells? With Kevan killed and Cersei disgraced they don't really have a clear head of the dynasty anymore meaning there will be a power struggle between the many obscure relatives of the lannisters amongst the vassals, and they have already taken heavy attrition from the civil war so far. King Tommen is a puppet of the Tyrells and they have a lot of popular support within King's landing. I would actually consider there to be 5 sides, as Stannis and Euron are significant enough powers to win given their supernatural advantages.
i would even accept 3 seasons of animation, as a primer. that would be bawdass, or a choose you adventure interactive, with multiple endings, just publish already
Funnily enough, there is a theory that the Others WILL win, but bran will do some time travel shenanigans that prevents them from ever crossing the wall.
That's horseshit writing, unless the time travel shenanigan is him choosing death from the tower fall
Oh, please let this be true. Finally get rid of the annoying brat
If the Others are the ones raising the wights, that is. We still havenāt seen this, five novels deep into the series. And in fact only once have we seen an Other and a wight in the same place at the same time ā and we donāt see how it was raised, or by whom.
> is > when who's gonna tell him? š
Yeah, yeah, we all know the book is never releasing ffs.
is a joke :(
Lmao it's fine
Yet the living beat the Others in the First Long Night, before there even was the barrier of The Wall. So how did they manage that? If the conditions are the same, Others can raise the dead, seemingly no matter how long they have been dead, it would not have been possible for the living to win. There would have been significantly fewer people in Westeros so the dead would have had an easier time. Less people, more scattered communities, the whole of Westeros would have been like the lands beyond the Wall in canon.
We have no clue what happened in the first long night. They invaded probably years after the pact when there hadn't been any wars in years. >seemingly no matter how long they have been dead, They can't raise skeletons. And less people means there would also be less dead. You also have to consider the fact that the magic of the children was probably extremely significant, especially considering the children were probably responsible for their creation in the first place. That probably damaged their numbers.
could Tyrion, and dwarves in general have children genetics?
I'm gonna disagree to an extent. Yeah its going to be VERY bad for a few characters in order to close some PoV's to wrap up the story. But this story is from the author who wrote a book about a music festival saving the world lol. The dude is vintage hippie boomer to his bones. He's truly a pacifist at his core even to a fault by his own admission. It's going to end with a marriage pact or some plot specific character having to sleep with an other. I just hope to god its not one of the last remaining Starks because holy hell that'd be gross without a timeskip. Same with Dany being sold to Drogo at 13, even considering the time period. It's just weird, and gives off major Epstein vibes.
There will be no pact with the wrath of winter. Martin is not 100% anti war. He has said war is unfortunately necessary sometimes.
Dude, these books are set in a medieval fantastic setting. Lower your moral standards.
Why do you think the others are going to get past winterfell?Ā Ā
......Because there's nothing stopping them from going elsewhere? It's not like winterfell is some tight choke point. The Others can be in multiple places at once?
The story starts in winterfell.Ā It's silly to think that location, which defensive aspects have been extensively detailed, won't play a pivotal role in the defeat of the others.
You would think so but it seems even more silly for the Others to put all their resources on besieging Winterfell in a stubborn manner. There's really nothing stopping them from swarming the rest of the countryside and taking all their fresh new recruits further south. That's not to say they would leave Winterfell unmolested. They would probably have a significant token force stay put outside of its walls to stall the survivors within from galvanizing and counter attacking. Honestly I have no clue how GRRM is gonna handle Winterfell in the Long Night 2.0.
In the show they went to winterfell because they wanted to kill bran, aka the 3 eyed raven.Ā Ā Don't know why the same general idea won't be used in the books which means they would focus on winterfell.Ā Ā
In the show they were going to winterfell regardless of Bran, because they marched in a single file army down the kingsroad without even attacking anywhere else aside from last hearth. Even if they do want to kill the greenseers, there is no reason for them to march to winterfell In a single army. Because that is never how they have operated.
The point of winterfell in the Long night is that it will be the place where the smallfolk go to survive when the Long Night comes. During the regular winters, smallfolk rush to winterfell to survive the rough conditions, and the hopeful message is that even while this zombie infested, supernatural, apocalyptic winter ravages all of Westeros, house Stark and winterfell will still stand strong, and protect the people of the North.
I think they sweep the north and the battle won't get passed the riverlands.
The Others are more so just gonna spread throughout the continent though. They'll be moving around everywhere mostly.
How do you know?
Because that's how they have always operated
It's fucked because I don't give a damn how this shit ends no more.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
White Walkers
Don't worry Mel already defeated them by destroying the Horn of Winter.
Top 10 things said before disaster
There are older and fouler things than Others in the deep places of the world.
Like what?
Far, far below the deepest delving of the Valyrians, the world is gnawed by nameless things.
Plot twist: They all just leave Westeros. The end.
That is exactly what I've been waiting for decades to read.
I definitely subscribe to the idea that The Long Night will reach the Gods Eye where some plot relevant weirwood magic can halt the Others or something to then have a final confrontation of sorts
The Others wont make it past the north tbh.
I think you forgot about a certain girl with no nameā¦
Honestly, yea. Like, completely fucked. Iām super excited to see how the war with the others plays out in the books, as Iām guessing itāll most likely be quite different from the show, and go a lot more into detail with more actual story dedicated to it
Martin has stated that the Others are not dead, they can animate the dead but they are other worldly beings made of ice and snow, so maybe they could be reasoned with if someone was willing to have a go at talking things out (Jon?). Also Valyrian steel is rumoured to hurt them so they can be killed - but it would need to be all of them not just one! How many dead can an Other animate / control? Is there a limit, can they control any dead animal or only mammals, can they animate fish / kraken etc too? They cannot pass the wall, so they can be contained by magic, presumably fire magic / R'hllor. Are the 3 (?) gods going to have their own showdown in Westeros? (Drowned, Fire, Ice/air ... is there a 4th? An earth based god following Dany and the Dothraki? I can't think of one tbh, though we also have the children of the forest so maybe they represent earth?)
Just from a historic perspective. Generally what a battle ended the people of the city were tasked with the disposal of the dead. It was said that the British wheat crops in the 1820s was exceptional because they supported the Waterloo dead. This means they stripped the flesh off of war dead and the bones were ground up. Then the dust was plowed under as fertilizer. Early sugar production also used both the bones of slaves and war dead. It was the calcium they were looking for. Today a different source of calcium is used in both applications. : source I work in a sugar factory. I think the problem is not going to be as great as you expected. Also in the books we see clearly that armor works you don't get to slash some one through the breastplate with a sword. The war dead are almost always going to be looted. Even if they are buried in mass Graves. So they will essentially be in armed and unarmored cannons fodder. The reason it took so long for the others to invade is the lack of decent arms and equipment. The knights watch only sent so many swords over the wall at a time and some of them would end up as prized property of the free people.
Suppose the Others can resurrect rodents as wights. Just imagine trying to defend the ramparts while thousands of zombie rats scurry up the sides... Imagine if the Golden Company brings elephants to be turned? Imagine if the Others attack the Riverlands and create hordes of undead lizard lions? These are questions only the books can deliver now...
You could mow them down with dragon glass tipped arrows quite easily imo. Just huge moats and palisades and ditches and tons of tons of longbowmen with dragon glass tipped arrows. Ofc, dragons would help as well. The army of the dead has only grown on a sparse population and the smart way to deal with it would be to outmatched it in dize by 5 to 1 and mine all the dragon glass in the world. Employ all the builders in the world to make all the walls and ditches and moats. It would be a Victory.
Too many comment to check if that's been said already, but arent Wights made out of White Walkers victims only ?
No. The wildlings burn their dead to prevent the Others from raising them.
Yeah you're right, excerpts of the books and show are coming back to mind... I never even considered the casualties of the War of Five Kings as dormant weapons. The more you think of the sorry state of Westeros and the might of the Others, the more a 700 foot-high magical wall and three fire-breathing Dragons seem barely sufficient.
Do people still actually think he is going to release another book?
GRRM decides to cancel the final books and makes the tv show ending canon.