A Song Of Ice And Fire

@Silent None because if Euron wins then he becomes a god-like being that'll crush them.

Wait a minute.....

How does one usher in the Long Night? What the hell would you have to do to accomplish something like that? And why would Westeros be the most heavily affected by the Long Night if the Empire of the Dawn was in Essos?

We're gonna need this.

I meant in defeating the heroes, not becoming a god. Euron is not the main villain, and should not be seen as such. While he is dangerous, I don't think him becoming a god is even possible, and he isn't the greater threat to Westeros.

edited 27th Sep '16 5:22:50 AM by SilentColossus

The Long Night seems to have been a global phenomenon. The Essosi even have a race of demons from the Grey Waste that parallel the White Walkers.

edit: Are we sure the Great Empire of the Dawn precedes the Valyrians? They don't seem to have settled beyond the Bone Mountains.

edited 27th Sep '16 6:35:55 AM by Kostya

I refer you to this:

Seems the idea is that if you sacrifice enough people you can power yourself up and become a god-like being. This idea is hinted at in Bran's ADWD chapter where people are sacrificing to the Weirwood trees and in the new TWOW Theon chapter he tries to manipulate Stannis into sacrificing Theon to the Weirwood tree. Probably for a power up.

I assert that the gods like R'hllor were originally human/Deep Ones/Old Ones/Children of the Forest that got fed off of enough human sacrifices to achieve godhood.

@Kostya Well it's said that the Valyrians learned dragon-riding from the people of Asshai where it's been theorized they first came. I believe Yandel briefly wonders that if the people of Asshai had dragon-riding then why didn't they conquer just like the Valyrians did. The irony being that they did conquer like the Valyrians did.

Daenerys even has visions of these people with gem-stoned eyes and gold-silver hair with pale fire swords in their hand that don't seem to be Valyrians.

@Vampire

edited 27th Sep '16 8:40:05 AM by MadSkillz

Well the weather in Westeros is essentially magical in nature as GRRM as pointed out. Winters, Summers, Springs lasting for years...I shudder to imagine monsoons lasting for years...so a night that never ends would be an extension of that.

The right magical ritual or sufficiently great eldritch act could potentially usher it.

Well bear in mind that all this information comes from in-Westeros history. Not totally reliable.

You want my answer, I think that Westeros and Essos were a supercontinent before the War of the Dawn. We have evidence of that with the Broken Arm of Dorne and so on, and all this migration of First Men to the East. Historically it would be similar to Doggerland...the part of English history when they were once attached to the European continent.

So the First War of the Dawn took place in a huge land from West to East. Hence the fact that you have many common legends and lore about the Long Night in both westeros and essos. You might have even had multinational heroes who eventually crossed the land on dragons and teamed up. And each respective member became the Azor Ahai or great hero of their respective culture and land.

After the War of the Dawn, or because of it, the land cracked and we had Westeros and Essos.

There's that and I like to think that the Great Empire of the Dawn owned significant chunks of Westeros.

I mean seriously it's called the War of the Dawn and this empire that was around for that is called the Great Empire of the Dawn.

Possibly what happened is that the Bloodstone Emperor( and what Euron's going to probably do) ushered in the Long Night which gave the Others the opportunity to move south.

So you had two different wars happening with different sets of heroes. One was an internal one to take down the Bloodstone Emperor with AA and the other one was an external war to drive the Others out with the Last Hero.

In that sense, Daenerys is AA and Jon/Bran are the Last Hero.

edited 27th Sep '16 10:09:23 AM by MadSkillz

It's a little disappointing for me that War of the Dawn 2.0 is going to be mainly Westeros but then that makes sense...at the time of the War of the Dawn, Westeros must have been a largely unmanned swamp not worth anyone's interest. Westeros nowadays has seen repeated migrations from Essos-To-Westeros and Dany is bringing a multicultural Badass Crew with her.

And I am sure that the new War of the Dawn will feature tremendous changes to the landscape and geography as well.

I wouldn't be so sure that it'll be only Westeros. Perhaps we'll only (or mainly) see Westeros because that's the context of our POV characters, but I don't see why that should mean the war wouldn't also be going on in Essos.

Back when I first started reading about the parallels between the stories in the East and Westeros about the Long Night and so on my first idea was that Daenerys might be stuck in Meereen for a narrative purpose, and that her role, with her dragons, is actually to win that very war in Essos. Meanwhile, another main character - Jon, probably - would have a parallel adventure in Westeros. I've later decided that Daenerys' story does seem to lead her back to Westeros, possibly in a manner similar to what we saw on the show, so that put an end to that particular pseudo-theory of mine.

It sounds like White Walkers also live in the Grey Wastes of Essos. Maybe Yi Ti will be fighting their own war during the last few books.

I think the reason we're not going that route is because GRRM's not interested and because of how long the series would become. If GRRM really wanted to create the Long Night's scope then Book 1-6 would be the first act of the series.

Speaking of the Gemstone kings. This is a really interesting set posts on it and the Long Night.

Tldr; Garth the Green was the son of the Bloodstone Emperor and would've been the Emerald Emperor had he stayed within the Great Empire of the Dawn. The legend that Garth the Green was the ancestor of most of the big Westerosi families like the Florents, Lannisters, Starks, Tyrells, Oakheart's etc. is also true. Garth the Green really was part of a line of God-emperors hence his lifespan and height.

Garth also possibly had a brother that would've been the Sapphire Emperor.

There's a lot more info on it but this was the most interesting to me.

edited 27th Sep '16 11:01:02 AM by MadSkillz

This was cool too:

Let's not take this too literally now, everyone. These God-Emperors may not have been gods at all. And it's possible that the Bloodstone Emperor was simply a corrupt ruler who disposed his sister, and weakened the Great Empire of the Dawn, (if that is even it's real name) leading to the Others, who had by this point been doing nothing other than wait for their time to shine, the chance to finally attack. Maybe the Great Empire of the Dawn had magic that held the Others at bay?

What do you (as in, everyone participating in this discussion) think about the veracity of the account about the Great Empire of the Dawn? Did rulers really live for an extremely long time? Were they really very good rulers?

For what it's worth, I'm buying none of that. They were people, not gods. These "histories" are nothing but stories that get through a game of telephone that lasts for dozens of generations (or more) before anything's written down (that also remains accessible for future generations). That seems much more plausible than the literal version of the stories.

Perhaps each of the thousand-year rulers represents a dynasty or some other period in the history of the Empire that, at the time, was so clearly different from what came before (and after) as to mutate into a supernatural reign of a god-king as the story was told to subsequent generations.

With all of that said, whatever is given in the evidently prophetic deams and visions of characters that have them must be considered credible; so if such a vision was unequivocal about specifically one person ruling like a deity, without a strong possibility that that person is actually a representation of something more complex, I would, of course, accept that the mythologies are not really mythologies, but histories.

I take the opposite approach. The fantastical parts are actually true. The logical explanations with some exceptions are less true.

The Deep Ones/ Squishers/The Old Ones did and still do exist.

There really were God-Emperors that lived for a long time descended from the Lion of Night and Maiden of Light.

A lot of the gods really do exist but they're closer to HP Lovecraft's gods being cosmic demons that have ascended from being some type of mortal.

The only reason, I think, your version would seem more logical is if this was a universe without magic. But it isn't. This world abounds with magic.

So long lived God-Emperors isn't too far-fetched.

Hell Bloodraven is a long-lived god in a way. He's around 150 after all and connected to the weirdwood network.

I think we would've learned more about the Great Empire of the Dawn if Daenerys had gone to Asshai.

But GRRM brought that the History of the World book that Jorah had given her in AGOT was never read by Daenerys but that Tyrion would read it and it would be important so it will probably come up again.

edited 27th Sep '16 4:16:52 PM by MadSkillz

Why is my relationship status in that post?

How is Tyrion going to make all these connections though? He doesn't know any of this stuff about the White Walkers and has no reason to think the GED is connected to Valyria.

@Kostya I don't think he will until Marwyn starts trying to connect it for him and this might not happen until after Daenerys fights Aegon.

My idea is that this is GRRM's solution to not taking Daenerys to Asshai where she will find truth.

Instead he gave Marwyn a role and have Tyrion read that book to bring her to the truth.

edited 27th Sep '16 4:17:13 PM by MadSkillz

Hmm, makes sense.

I wonder though. Does it strike anyone else as weird that Martin was building up towards Dany going towards Asshai and then he abruptly has her turn around and go the other way? He obviously changed his plans for her during AFFC/ADWD but it makes me wonder if his original plan had her traveling to Asshai for ASOS instead of Slaver's Bay. I feel like it would make more sense than what he wound up doing. Either that or ADWD was supposed to open with her having consolidated her rule in Meereen and then deciding to travel to Asshai.

I agree with you on that, but not the god-kings. Those two stories are unrealistic on a different scale, and with a different tone.

You can believe in dragons and the children of the forest and the greenseers because we're dealing with the consequences of those things existing, and of the cost - apparently always in blood - that you pay to have access to their power.

There's no such depth or - in any straighforward way - consequence for having god-kings. It would be like having a fountain of youth and a character who just lives for a very long time by using it, at little to no personal expense, let alone a sacrifice made (willingly or not) by someone else. That's not going to be discovered on Planetos. Instead you'll rot - but live, to some definition of living - in the Tower of the Undying; or you'll be absorbed into a weirwood that becomes your body.

Now, I'll grant that the details we have about the god-kings are so vague that we would not know of the implications and costs of their reign, and of course we do have the Shadow by Asshai (and, possibly, the Long Night) as potential costs of the power that enabled the god-kings. Thing is, we don't know enough to positively link those two elements. Perhaps we never will; life can create a story and then forget it, with no accessible sign of it ever having happened for future generations to discover. Happens in real life, and must happen on Planetos (and just about any fictional universe, as well). I get the feeling that we will know, though, and I'm leaning towards it not being as simple as god-kings.

Well, sometimes Lovecraft's mosters just exist in a completely different frame of reference, where our entire universe, to them, is just part of some journey between two places they can be bothered to even think about.

I take your point, though, and, having noticed the place names and fishy monster-people and other Lovecraft references, I agree that many of the phenomena we encounter - even if indirectly, and through a sceptical point of view - will actually have Lovecraftian elements. We essentially have Innsmouth(s) on Planetos, and the oily stone structures we've encounter around the known world seem very likely to be Lovecraftian in some way. What's beyond the other Wall is quite clearly Lovecraft-land with Lovecraft-monsters, as well.

Even on relatively flimsy evidence - but some evidence, and not just corresponding rumours and folk tales that may overlap coincidentally - I'm willing to accept something akin to "Deep Ones". I'm not buying god-kings, though; a lot of evidence would have to come in before I'd bid for that. I'll have the Great Empire of the Dawn, though; just not the specifics.

@Kostya The HOTU shows the Mysha moment in Yunkai so based off that I believe that Daenerys was always meant to go to Slaver's Bay before Asshai.

I think the idea was that Daenerys needed to do something for 5 years for timeskip after ASOS to work so GRRM decided to have her rule there expecting to skip over a lot of stuff and flashback to the important stuff.

I think the original order of things was :

Daenerys decides to rule Meereen in ASOS

5 year timeskip

Daznak's Pit

Daenerys ends up with the Dothraki and gathers them to her

She heads back to Meereen and leaves it with the ironborn fleet.

The ironborn probably convince her to go east and Daenerys decides to pay a stop at Asshai where she finds truth.

Daenerys lands somewhere in Westeros.

But then GRRM scrapped the 5 year timeskip and had to flesh out what Daenerys was doing in Meereen having to slowly character develop her until she get to where he wanted her to be as a person.

That'd take too long so GRRM scrapped Asshai and introduced Marwyn. And now Daenerys is most likely going to go west until she lands back in Westeros.

@Mad Skillz

I hadn't remembered that. Even so, I see no evidence that R'hllor can crush the Others easily. A god is nothing more than a powerful being, but it does not mean they are all powerful or invincible. They're not Reality Warpers. The Others plan to kill the source of the power: their followers. No more blood sacrifice leaves a hungry R'hllor.

The Others are winter personified. Cold and death. Individually, they might be not as powerful as something like R'hllor. But as a collective? The cold always wins. Fire burns out, and everything dies. If R'hllor and the like are powerful demons/gods, then the Others are the same, just taking the form of many. Let's compare R'hllor to a man. The Others would be a warm of wasps. Or a disease. That plan to eat him. He can stomp one, but not all of them.

Euron looks are these monsters and gods and wants to be like them. Emmett Booth / Poor Quentyn is the one who really helped push for the Euron theory, and compares him to Saruman. And we all knew how the whole "betray Sauron" was going to turn out for him.

The Others are winter and death. Euron is a Manchild with magic powers having a power fit.

edited 27th Sep '16 5:08:09 PM by SilentColossus

Well maybe they're not actually deities but I do believe they're supposed to be something beyond human and that's not too far fetched in a world with Giants, Children of the Forest, Deep Ones and magical bloodlines.

I mean Euron beating the heroes would get him everything he wants turning him into an Anti-Other god seeing as that would entail grabbing a dragon or three for himself in addition to being armored in Valyrian Steel, having magic powers and who knows what other God-like traits he would pick up.

The Others beating the heroes would mean wiping out humanity in Westeros.

I mean I agree that Euron isn't going to to be the main threat of the series. I'm just pointing out that Euron achieving his ambitions would make him far more menacing than the Others achieving theirs.

You can fight the Others. You can't fight a god.

But then I guess it also depends on whether you'd rather humanity die or live under the thumb of a cruel and sadistic god.