Once the closest thing to a town in the lands beyond the Wall,
something terrible and mysterious befell Hardhome about
600 years ago. It has since become an overgrown
ruin, shunned and considered accursed.
Yet Despite that, it is suddenly important again in A Song of Ice
and Fire as hordes of refugees flee there following the dreams
of a woods witch. As reports reach John of whites
in the woods and waters, dreams reach Melisandre of an
impossibly cold mist, turning the free folk into skulls.
What the heck happened all those years ago, and what the heck is
happening there now? Could this be how the others
get, or at least dramatically increase the size of their army?
I would argue that there is so, so much happening at Castle
Black alone, never mind the rest of the Wall and beyond,
especially at the end of A Dance With Dragons, that Hardhome
tends to get lost in the shuffle a bit, especially for book
readers, but even for those of us who are most obsessed, of
course because it was a little more prominent on the TV show is
why I phrase it that way. But Hardholm, however, heavily
hews to those happenings, meaning it is a tied
inextricably to a lot of different plot lines.
John decides to go to Hardholm, then changes his mind to March
South, then gets stabbed. So you can see why it's rather
chaotic and caught up amongst other plot lines.
So it's connected to a lot of things, and it's very important
by itself. It's a place destroyed by fire,
now overwhelmed by ice. It is indeed cursed if you look
at it that way, with both natural and supernatural
explanations behind all that. And we've got that and more on
this episode of History of Westeros podcast do.
We have any more alliteration. That was nice.
I always try to squeeze in alliteration when I can.
That's right. Hello and welcome everybody.
It's another episode of History of Westeros podcast.
We're so happy to be here with you.
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How's it going, Sean? What's your what you got on your
shirt there? I don't.
The Last Airbender and The Last Airbender who was frozen in ice
had been a little inspired from the idea what might be frozen up
in the North. Right on and I have the Nights
Watch Brothers shirt the Blues instead of the Blues Brothers.
You know it's the it's the Black Brothers.
Even though it says the Nights Watch.
Brothers, I have a Pickle Jar Hero shirt.
Any fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm will know the reference to the
Pickle Jar gambit, One of my most OFT referenced Curb bits,
and I'm quite excited for the episode tonight.
Everybody wants to be a pickle jar hero.
I always want to be a pickle jar hero.
I mean, it applies to everything really.
Does not just let me do it. I'll get it.
Surely I will get it.
I'm different. No, you just always want to try.
Even if I don't think I'm going to get it, I have to try.
It is a a strange little quirk of of human nature that yes, we
all individually want to be the one to open the pickle jar or
whatever, open the strange packaging, whatever difficult
packages, among other things. Yeah, yes.
So hello everybody. I want to also give a shout out
to our good friend Nina. You can check her out at good
queenalley.tumblr.com. That's 1L in alley and 1L in
Tumblr. I I don't suppose you thought
there'd be two in there, but just in case, Tumblr is TU MB
LR. No, it's slumbler and the first
L is silent. Slumbler, Slumbler, Slumbler.
The latest blog post over on Good Queen ali.tumbler.com is a
question about warts and age limit and how does that work
when like Theon was 19 for example, When would that have
expired at some point? Like how does that work when he
was he had just could he have just still been there when he
was 30 if nothing had changed? Like how does that actually?
Work for a moment. I thought you said warts.
Warts, yes. Do warts work in Westeros?
Whenever he grows up, whenever Theon grows up, that's.
Yeah, So it just never, Yeah. Maybe never.
Yeah. But not only does he have some
good takes on this, she has some direct quotes from George on the
matter, so it's worth reading for multiple reasons to check
that out. Once again, that is good.
Queenalley.tumblr.com You can send us questions at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or you can post them here in the live
chat and we might answer them live and shout your name out.
We'll also mention some episodes at the end of this one that
relate to the topic at hand in case you want to stay immersed.
And I will also answer this trivia question for you all.
Unless you already know the answer then you don't need me to
tell you the answer, but it will come at the end one way or the
other. The question being what is the
name of Cotter Pike's ship? The name will be read during
this episode, so pay attention if you don't recall.
Also, Congrats to Ashton, AK Fox, and Brambles for winning
both of the trivia games that we held on our monthly Discord
hangout. For patrons, there's a
dominating performance. Yeah, she did very well.
There were a lot of sigil questions and she does a lot of
sigil art, so she had a leg up. But no, she she did very well.
Just props to her. Good job, Good job.
Good job, good job. That's the designer of our logo,
if you all didn't know too. That's right.
That's right, In the first half of this episode we will deal
with the history of Hard Home, the mysteries of its
destruction, and that's going to include some real life volcano
lore. second-half of the episode, we'll discuss what's
actually happening there now. So good, a little past and
present look, as we'll explain in this episode as well.
Hard Home, from a meta perspective, was conceived by
George at least a decade prior to A Dance With Dragons.
So maybe after A Storm of Swords, but definitely before A
Feast for Crows. And that's when we first hear of
it. A Dance With Dragons is when
it's first mentioned, and as we so often do, we'll start with
that first mention. It's not.
It's the very first chapter of A Dance With Dragons.
In fact, it is the Vermeer's prologue.
So right off the bat now, it's not strange that Hardhome hadn't
been mentioned prior to A Dance With Dragons because it was
abandoned. No one lived there.
There wasn't much reason to go there.
Even the Free Folk hadn't really lived there for centuries until
recently, so recent events caused it to become important
again, which is why it pops up in the narrative after having
not been mentioned before. It's not like people think about
it every day, like Rome. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
We do hear that ships from Eastwatch by the sea
occasionally pass by the area because it's part of ranging.
Like they Rangers go over land to check things out, but they
also do like sea ranging and by going up the coast there.
And Hardhome is on the coast. So it's not that they're
specifically checking out Hardhome, it's they're checking
out the coast and Hardhome is there.
But here's why that has changed. Here's why Hardhome is becoming
important again after so long a leader has emerged, apparently
on the strength of some dreams she's had.
Her name is Mother Mole and here is a quote about her.
Supposedly she made her home in a Burrow beneath a hollow tree.
Whatever the truth of that, she had a vision of a fleet of ships
arriving to carry the free folk to safety across the narrow Sea.
Thousands of those who fled the battle were desperate enough to
believe her mother Mole has LED them all to Hardhome, there to
pray and await salvation from across.
The sea, Otho, Yarwick scowled. I'm no Ranger, but Hardhome is
an unholy place, it said. Cursed.
Even your uncle used to say as much.
Lord Snow, why would they go there?
We don't know much about this Mother Mole person at all.
We haven't seen her on screen. She's just been mentioned by
several people, both by Vermeer, by Jon Snow, and maybe a few
others. If she's inventing her dream,
there's a certain cleverness to the choice of hard home, which
is that it is the best place for ships to arrive.
However, there's no reason to think that ships would arrive
because it's been gone for so long.
I don't think this is some plot by Mother Mole, just leading the
people there on a whim. I think she really did have this
dream, you know, I think she's sincere.
In other words, it might be just a crazy random dream.
However, it really does happen. Ships actually do show up there.
So there's we have a lot of reason to believe that this was
a legitimate prophetic dream at both.
Ships from the Nights Watch and some random slave ships from
Lease are blown off course there.
So Mother MO quotes it as salvation where they once found
damnation, and that's sort of true.
You know, but this makes me think of what's that is
Druselka, the Roinish priestess that was part of the Roinish
migration. She also sort of led her people
to their demise. That's a good point.
Yes, that's a very good point. Before Nymeria LED them away.
Yeah, well she LED them away and she some Roinish went back to.
Oh, was just open. That's OK.
I was thinking somebody. Else, yeah, no.
Celka LED her. Like, brought a bunch of people
from. They were in the Summer Isles.
That's. Right after their wanderings
went bad, some people went back. They went back and they just got
hunted down and enslaved. Which is what happened here.
You're right. So the dream.
This is a great one of the most tragic examples of how dream
interpretation can go so wrong. Technically, the dream was
salvation, where they once found damnation.
Well, that is true for some of them, as we'll see, but only a
very small percentage of them escaped to some warmer pastures.
A lot of others were captured by slavers.
Technically they went somewhere warmer, but in slaver, in
chains, it's not a better life. And that's what had befell most
of the people who got away from hard home to this point.
That might be a debatable point. It might be a better life
because the alternative might be Starve and Freeze to Death or.
And risen again as a children by.
Zombies, you know. That's a good point rock and a
hard place type situation, which is really what a lot of this
episode is going to contain like well this is awful.
I would well the alternative is worse and that's that's sort of
how I phrased it to begin the episode.
We have a place that was destroyed by fire and now is
being overwhelmed by ice. So it's truly, it's in itself is
caught between the two major elemental forces that this story
highlights. I don't.
Remember if it's in in the the document.
But I remember there was a quote bad, worse and worse.
The beggar's Choice. You know, Yeah.
And that's often what this is. Yeah.
I mean the people aren't going to hard home because they think
great things are going to happen.
They it's it is desperation. They're like they're already
starving and and cold and a lot of them are sick and hounded by
the others and by the undead so and by nights watch and for a
while Stannis's men were hunting them too because this is all
fall out from the battle beneath the wall.
So we don't have any real so I I rose the idea of mother Maul
inventing the stream just to dismiss it.
I want to be thorough. I don't actually think that's
very likely, but you know, we're trying to cover all the bases
here. So I think that's she had the
dream and they've all followed this dream and well, this is
where it's taking us. I want to point another thing
out here is that this Mother Mole character, I wonder if she
might become significant. Like, it's hard to predict where
this is going because I can imagine we never even go to
Hardhome like a there's no follow through with this, you
know? But whether we do or not, I
still think it's interesting. She, this Mother Mole character,
convinced thousands of people to follow this dream, right?
It's one thing to have a dream and maybe the people close to
you or maybe even your whole village, but she got thousands
of people to go. So her or someone close to her
must have some significant influence, whether it's a
leadership role or maybe her dreams have been correct in the
past. I wonder how many other
properties she has thrown out there.
They came to fruition and people like, well, I guess we better do
what she's saying, you know? She might be charismatic.
You're right. I I like the idea that she's had
prophetic dreams come true before and and since this one
did, in a way, in a manner of speaking, certainly ships did
arrive there. That's not debatable.
So yeah, And? And if we're going back to
Vermeer's chapter, it is indeed a scene of great desperation.
He thinks on how there's literally like you said, Sean,
thousands of them quote, struggling through the forest,
hungry, frightened, fleeing the carnage that had descended on
them at the wall. It's a series of such conditions
for the free folk. Yeah, a bunch of, like you said,
bad, worse, worst, or damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Choices. Name your cliche.
There's a lot of them that fit here.
Now also at Hardhome, this is what we also have sort of in the
mix that we'll discuss more later in the second-half.
But this is what's attached to this is the Night's Watch fleet,
which is 11 ships. Some of them are commandeered
from Tycho Nestorius, some of them are commandeered from
Lyseni, and one's a Pentashi trader, one's an Ibanez.
Well, it's a ragtag group. And then there were other Lyseni
ships that came before the Night's Watch fleet that were
the Good Heart and the Elephant. And those are the ones that took
slaves and tried to get away, one of which ended up at Braavos
because it was taking on water. And Arya finds out about it.
And so we have a connection with this plot line to Arya.
And as we've discussed in the past and we'll raise again later
in the episode, it's also potential connection to Daenerys
because the other ship was making its way through the Step
Stones. And perhaps Denaris or somebody
else will pass through there and the news of what's going on in
the north will trickle to Denaris and that will be perhaps
the thing that gets her to go north.
And I gotta say, a connection like this in the first book
maybe you write off is something that George planted but didn't
harvest. Yeah.
But at this point, these connections, I feel like they've
got to be meaningful. Yeah, I don't think he's doing
this randomly now, you know? Yeah, it's more it's you're
right. It's more it's the product of
more recent planning and plotting out for for the plots.
Yeah, exactly. So if you think about it that
way that's why the you could argue that the prophecy somewhat
came true for some of these people.
Because the small the one ship, the Good Heart.
There's the Good Heart and the Elephant.
These are the two slave ships that took a bunch of free folk
slaves from Hardhome and and and slipped away before the Nights
Watch even showed up. One of the ships like I said is
in this is making its way through the step zones and might
be picked up by Orane Waters or any number of people.
Salador Sanz people, who knows. But the other one ended up in
Bravos. Like we said, they will probably
have a good fate. This might be the the the one
example of the potential possible exception to people
getting taken off into slavery or starving or whatever because
Braavos is aggressively anti slavery so they're relatively
safe. They might not have a good life
there, but they won't be enslaved.
They might be poor and they might be in poverty.
In fact it's pretty likely for a lot of them.
But some of them will find jobs, employment, what, what have you.
And they're living in a warmer place than they were.
They're not going to be killed by the others, They're not going
to be eaten by giants. So it's definitely a massive
improvement on their fortunes and and especially when you
compare it to the rest of them who are either still there or
did get carried off into slavery.
But a lot of that is what we will hone in more.
And on the second-half of the episode, let's cast our gaze
back in time to discuss both the history of the place and just
its geography, its layout, the place, what it means, why it was
selected for a placed a habitable location in the 1st
place, and let's get on it with a quote.
Hardholm sits on a sheltered Bay and has a natural harbor deep
enough for the biggest ships afloat.
Wood and stone are plentiful near there.
The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and
sea cows close at hand. Now, sea cows.
I think that means walrus, but it might mean like, I think it
has to be walrus, because I know sometimes sea cows are manatees,
but manatees wouldn't live in that climate, so that can't be
it. I think that's walrus and
walruses are there's blubber, there's meat, there's tusks.
It's very useful. This is George's fantasy world.
They might just be sea cows. Yeah, sea cows, yeah, they're
just little bovine, undersea, bovine swimming around.
Yeah, So we, we should have a map shot here.
It sits on the East Coast of Storolds Point which is a nice
little outcrop of land there. On the the East Coast of the
lands, beyond the wall. I don't know who store old is,
but he has a point and there it is.
It sits near vast forest as as it says there, there's mountains
nearby. We know that given the mention
of caves and cliffs, the screaming caves that we'll talk
about. Not to mention the likely
volcanic activity which just probably made it more fertile
too. That's one thing we've learned
about volcanoes over our studies and and talking about volcanoes
and a variety of scenarios like Dragonstone and Valyria that
might be plantable. Not that the free folk do much
of that, but were it to have developed to that point, it
might have been a place where agriculture or at least grazing
could take place effectively. So you can see why people live
there. Space, a huge harbor.
That's really important because that's the kind of thing that
brings trade from all over because any sort of ship can get
close and unload and it's easy to do that.
The hunting and fishing of course was mentioned.
The agricultural potential mining, like I said, there's
probably that. Given there's the cliffs and and
mountains, there's probably something.
There may not be anything super valuable like gold, but there's
probably something and there's stone itself is valuable
quarries or even that is useful. So if you magically scooped up
the that location and placed it South of the Wall 1000 years
ago, it would be a city. It's so nice.
It's it's because that is what almost happened in much worse
conditions in the, you know, far north, like trading partners
they would have had trade with. Not just E Watch 'cause we know
the Rangers trade with the Nights Watch, or we know the
Rangers trade with the free folk, or at least they have in
the past. They don't trade them weapons,
but they trade them furs and amber and other things that are
of use, you know, maybe fishing hooks or who knows?
Maybe just food sometimes. Yeah, why not?
Often times, probably. Stuff, yeah.
And dragon glass could be given in trade to the Nights Watch.
Things like that. There's lots of useful stuff.
In fact, that would be when I was talking about what things
that might be mineable up there. Very likely dragon glass in that
area is is available to some setup work would probably need
to be done. Can't.
Just like hop off a boat and start harvesting dragon dragon
glass. But you know it's probably there
so like Bravos is nearby like the Ebenez probably would come
there there's a lot of you know there'd be a lot of would could
a lot of potential for traffic had that gotten going.
I'm. Going to throw a couple of
things out there when we first started researching, when I
first started reaching this and when I knew we were doing this
episode, I was in the back of my mind.
I was like, I wonder if those howling caves and all this fiery
destruction there could be related to some sort of volcanic
activity, if maybe some. There's some water underground
that got exposed to lava, and sure enough, that's exactly what
was inspiring George. But another piece of this
thought is that if they had some sort of underground warmth, warm
water or some sort, that might have been another reason that
people would live. There would have been this extra
sort of unique resource, kind of like Winterfell.
Absolutely. Great call.
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe this is a little
stretch, but if hard Cone could blow up, could Winterfell blow
up? You know, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know that there's, Well,
yeah, I mean, I guess it's technically possible.
Who can say like that's? I don't.
I don't think there's enough mountains nearby.
But there, you know, some crazy things happen sometimes.
Yeah, that would be wild. Now it looks like we got a
couple of people here that that added some info for us.
Lollotov and guilty Undertaker both point out that there was a
manatee relative that lived in the Bering Sea called the
Stellar's Sea Cow, but they were haunted to extinction within a
few decades of their discovery by Europeans.
Dang it, Europeans. There are no Europeans in
Hardholm, so. But no, we did have some other
people in the chat who said, yeah, though, that was that when
they heard sea cow, they thought of the Stellar sea cow in this,
yeah, cold water manatee. We'll score one for our very
knowledgeable chatters that we could call right there.
So that quote said halfway to becoming a town and quote the
only settlement approaching a town.
What does that mean? I don't mean the halfway part.
Well, I kind of do, but like what steps were not yet taken or
what had not been achieved, what hurdles had not been overcome,
and how many people does that mean?
You know, what is halfway to a town in terms of population like
23400? I've looked this up.
There is no universal definition for what makes a town or a
village where. There are some attempts at
codifying this, but it's a it's a ridiculous endeavor in some
ways I like. I appreciate any attempts to
standardize certain things that aren't like a matter of personal
belief, you know, But this has been done so many different ways
by so many different cultures in in history.
It's not like you can just start over with a met with some new
system, you know. In my mind, I'll tell you at
least a piece of what makes a town and there are a lot of
factors 'cause I think the just the straight population is 1,
but even that, it's got to be the population per square acre
or. Whatever, the density has to be
included in it, right? That's it's a piece of it, the
straight population, the density of the population.
But I think maybe even more key than those connected to all
those. So is it?
There are people who aren't responsible for producing their
own food. There's enough food being
produced by the population in general that some people start
to specialize in being blacksmiths or horse traders or
on and ONS. That makes sense.
Yeah, specialty specialization is one thing that city brings,
yes. Or towns Or villages, Yes.
Close, close knit societies or living arrangements enable that.
Yeah, that's a very good way to think about it.
So in some ways they had this. They wouldn't have had a lot of
close by land routes with trade, lots of trade, but they would
have had a lot of potential ship trade or at least a decent
amount of that and not a huge population to feed.
You know it's large for beyond the wall but if we're talking a
few 100 people, that's not some massive amount of food they're
having to find on a regular basis.
But it is significant that's still that's that would still
matter. And they may be able to get
massive amounts of food if they're able to fish and hunt.
You know different other larger sea creatures can provide more
food and if there's more fertile land from the volcanic area
around, you know who knows thousands of millions of years
past might have made this land more fertile and maybe if they
even had some worm in neck mechanism underneath to get them
more water or more better crop production and so on.
I I don't think it's hard to believe that they were making a
lot of food and had AI think it might be more.
I think Nina made some comments in our document that for better
or worse they had this split power and that no one entity was
strong enough to completely hold hard home, at least not yet.
But it was big enough for four different people to be sharing
power. So that means I don't think it
could have been like 38 or even 380.
I think if 4-4 different chieftains.
I think that one implies that there was a good number of
people and a good number of resources, but also maybe that
it was a little spread out to. It wasn't quite dense enough to
be able to control all of it. It was spread out a little.
But but you know over time that would grow.
If it hadn't been curtailed, that probably would have grown
into it's all a town, if not a city.
Agree. Yeah, definitely.
And and and in some ways it's. I don't want to go too far this
comparison, but I want to think of Ashai and how Ashai you could
make lots of money by delivering food there because they have
tons of golden gems but hardly any food.
So like the price of golden gems drops massively and the price of
food was way up. And that's to a lesser extent
what would happen there. Now they might have, like you
said, might have plenty of local food.
It might not be much of an issue, but in winter and in
other times where it's hard, people could probably make a lot
of money bringing food there and trading it for dragonglass and
fur and amber and things that are they that relatively
plentiful there. That'll be rare in other parts
of the world. People.
Someone like Valyrians might pay a lot for some of that stuff
just because it's rare, you know, like, oh, it's like you
got rich people that want to own things from far away places, you
know, And it's like, oh, this is an exotic, this is weirwood from
beyond the wall. Like, oh ah, you know, they're
having their dinner party and people could be, like, all
entranced and bedazzled by these faraway objects.
That's why the world becomes interconnected people.
That's why ships wanted to sail around Africa and Marco Polo
wanted to go to China. And sometimes it is almost like
prestige thing to have something rare, but sometimes there's just
some food that doesn't grow around any pepper or you know,
some something that usually for most of history people were just
eating the food that could grow right around them and it was a
very limited diet. And now we get, you know, sushi
for lunch and lasagna for dinner, and I think twice about
it, but imagine how special it would be to have some unique new
food. And if I don't know if it would
have been necessarily food coming from hard home, but it
doesn't necessarily have to be a a royal prestige thing.
Wine, as simple as that. Wine.
They don't, they cannot make grapes up there.
And they love wine. Like this is a consistent thing
with like one, one love the wine.
Like Manson and Torment were like, oh, that's the one thing
they do really well, is that wine.
That's the one thing they'll like.
They denigrate everything, like actually, but their wine is
good. That's the one thing that we
like. So Nina, yeah, like you said,
Nina pointed out a smart thing here, which is that the
consistency of the South is what enables towns like you have
families that have existed in held land for generations, if
not thousands of years. And that consistency of
leadership has enabled the stability of those towns.
Like Duskendale has been there a long time and it for the most
part has been stable and has been led by the same people,
Barrowton, very similar White Harbor, all these places have,
they haven't really changed hands, right?
Maybe temporarily, but they've been very stable.
Hardhome doesn't have that stability because it doesn't
have this large government body sort of protecting it and
keeping it stable, keeping that bottom line.
Establishing rules. People know what they can count
on. They they're confident that if I
if I build this farm, I'm only going to be taxed X percent.
And if I get attacked by bandits, the local Lords will
send protection to me and you. You know you can be sure of
what's going to happen with your plans and your family and your
land and such. Absolutely.
So let's move on. Let's have let's get a take a
quote here from a maester and unfortunately we don't know when
this was, but it's pretty cool quote.
It went so bad to know when this was, by the way.
I know. Me too.
It's just we have no idea. A most fascinating account of
Hardhome can be found in Maester Willis's Hardhome, an account of
three years spent beyond the Wall among Savages, Raiders, and
Woods Witches. Willis journeyed to Hardholm on
a Pentoshi traitor and established himself there as a
healer and counsellor so that he might write of their customs.
He was given the protection of Gorm the Wolf, a Chieftain who
shared control of Hardholm with three other chiefs.
Can I just say I love hearing about maesters doing
ethnographies? That is so cool.
This is way cooler than the Maesters, who spend their entire
career at the Citadel and don't have much, like, field
experience. This guy is like, Oh no, I'm in
the this is like, this is an arc.
This is Indiana Jones. Yeah, I know.
Yeah, this. This this guy, I mean, he
literally embedded himself into the community so that he could.
He could be a part of it rather than.
Just study it in the park. Yeah, he did it right.
Anyway, a lot of respect to Maester Willis.
Yeah, we like Maester Willis. We stand, Maester.
Willis, although he does title his his ethnography among
Savages Raiders so so. That was just this clickbait
title to get Southerners to read it, yeah.
I don't think that title would have passed, yeah.
Well, none of the people beyond the Wall could read anyway.
They're like, what is that a book like?
Yeah, it's like, what does it say?
It says I love what I love The free folk.
That's what the title is. The Free Folk are the Best
people in the world, is what? It's yeah, no, you got to start
with the savages. You got to got to pull them in
like yeah, we are like what do? You mean that's not it's it's
like modern PC culture. Like what do you mean savages?
That's not an insult. We are savages.
What do you talk about, say, someone might take pride in?
Savagery. Yeah.
Like, I like it when they call me a savage.
Yeah. I was like, yeah, it might be an
insult to you, but to him as he likes it.
That's right. I'm a wish.
Don't you forget it? So does anyone get the vibe that
Gorm the Wolf might have been a skin changer?
I mean, the Wolf, I mean, that's just a nickname.
It could be anything. But like, maybe he could have
been, like, might give him a little more clout, you know,
might make him a little more powerful as the Chieftain, you
know. So he'd go, he went there on a
Pentachi trailer. He went like, from apparently
from Old Town all the way up there.
Gives you an idea of how many trade ships were used to go
there. I like that.
Really seems like it was regular and normal.
And things have changed. You know, like we said, Hardhome
was destroyed 600 years ago. So this story of Willis and
Gorham is older than that. You know, that's all we can say.
It's more than 600 years old. So it's not hard to see how
Gorham would have benefited from this arrangement.
Right. This is a maester.
We're talking about a maester. He knows how to heal, and he
knows things about science and lots of knowledge that Gorm
could benefit from. And yeah, that seems useful to
have. I mean, it doesn't help much,
but it does narrow the time down somewhat.
Knowing that it was a Maester, it had to be, since there were
Maesters. Although maesters have been
around a long time, but yeah, you're you're right.
So this is this isn't like 8000 years ago, but.
Somewhere between 600 years and 6000.
Years you narrowed it down. But man, imagine if it was, you
know, I don't know, 600, 30 years, right?
Like, because we know he tries to go back.
And I it may be just out of curiosity, but I I also I can't
help but wonder if if he came back and compared notes with
something at the Citadel and realized, oh crap, every 600
years a volcano goes off in hard.
On you know something like that if he piece.
Something together and realize something might be happening
there and you need to go do something about it.
Or maybe value Dragon Glass, or who knows?
Who knows? Imagine if volcanoes were
cyclical like that, like every 600 years just going to go time
to move. It's 599 years, so we.
Would wait till the 590. 9th year, Yeah, people would wait
till the last minute. Yeah, it's like maybe, you know,
it could be early. Y'all, you might want to get
moving. Like how sure are you of that
calendar? Like 600 years is a long time
for something to get off there. So yeah, so obviously Gorman
could benefit from having a master on his side, just the
healing part, let alone the other knowledge of maybe metal
urgy or who knows what other specialties this master had or
what else he had studied. And what does Gorm have to do?
Just give the guy a place to sleep and some food and his
protection, which he already presumably that's not hard for
him. Like we know wildling leaders
lead by strength. They follow powerful leaders.
There's very little reason to doubt it was different 700 years
ago or however longer this was. So in fact, it may have been
more like that. How, if that's even possible, to
be more like that. But so yeah, so good.
A good mutually beneficial arrangement, I think.
Yeah, it would have been an interesting novelty for for the
town and for Gorham. Like, certainly there'd be a mix
of opinions, but I'm thinking about Ragnar and the priest that
he kind of took under his wing. Oh, from Vikings, Yeah, Yeah,
yeah, yeah. That is kind of similar, yeah.
Where the person kind of learns to get along and everybody knows
not to mess with him, 'cause then you have to mess with Gorm
or Ragnar or whatever. You're like, yeah, don't mess
with that guy, so. But the insights and stories,
just like he, just like the maestro, wants to bring all this
knowledge back home and it'll be interesting and novel and to
everyone, he gets to bring knowledge to them too.
They would, yeah. Would also be entertained and
intrigued by you. Know to to continue using
examples from other fandoms and other properties like picture
C3PO telling stories to the Ewoks like this Maester would
have some stories to tell they would appreciate and he would
have they would like you said they would have stories to tell
him that he would be like wrapped and trying to write it
all down and be like yeah this is good stuff.
So this arrangement of four chiefs ruling Hardhome.
It seems like that was probably normal.
The way it's written it seemed like it was a standard division.
Maybe it wasn't always 4, but maybe that was normal.
Ish. Until we hear otherwise.
That's that's the assumption we have to work on.
But it kind of feels like gangs dividing territory, cartels sort
of like unofficially dividing what's theirs and what isn't.
It's not some government that has made this division, but it
is sort of held in place by the strength of the the the people
that are upholding the system in the 1st place, the the leaders,
the chiefs, right? So it it works in its own way,
but there can be more chaos or a churn to use the Expanse as yet
another when when there's a change at the top it can be, it
can be a lot of trickle down violence.
There would be less stability over generations, which is would
hold it back from growing into a bigger town or city.
But I think it arose because there were so many resources
there, it attracted so many people, and I think eventually
those four chieftains would have evolved into something more
centralized. Yeah, quite possibly.
Like a like a coming things like a king beyond the wall.
If you can have a king beyond the wall, if that can happen,
then surely someone can seize full control of Hardhome.
You know, it just apparently just didn't happen.
It would probably take war, probably take some time.
There'd be some back and forth conflicts, but.
Which might look a bit like some of the examples used before.
It might look like of 1 cartel gaining dominance over a region
where previously several cartels did or like gang turf wars kind
of thing. And by the way, it might also
look like, I don't know, half of Westeros hundreds or thousands
of years ago too, right? Yeah.
Depending on how long those. Ones through these struggles of
control and dominance and back and forth.
You know, Yeah, 'cause back in the days of seven or dozens or
100 kingdoms, there was lots and lots of war.
You may have had regions of pockets of peace and areas that
were relatively safe, but maybe not a lot of those.
Another thing I think of is like the pirate cities of pirate
towns of the, say of different places around the world.
Usually like we think of in America, we often think of the
Caribbean 'cause that's where piracy in this part of the world
had its peak. But there would be other places
like Madagascar and the Red Sea where piracy was, was big and
there were pirate spots that have fences and bars and
brothels and all that sort of thing.
Black Sails is a good show that that shows a lot of that semi
historically accurate there. So they'd be safer in a lot of
ways and and less safe in other ways.
Like it's it's sort of the difference between like a black
market and you know a market that's heavily given laws and
and restrictions and stuff like that.
In some ways that makes it better in some ways you know
depending. So you might like if Davos lived
in that era, he'd have definitely gone to hard home and
traded there. He might have been frequently.
In fact when he in his in his youth, he did that anyway as a
as a sailor from someone else's ship.
So it's a very safe assumption. So I tried to imagine this place
at its peak, whatever that was. We don't know what its peak was.
We tried to guess like several 100 people, maybe 1000 people,
maybe more. I do really do picture people
coming from all over the globe. Maybe even as far as Ashai,
maybe even as far. Maybe even farther.
I don't know. But Valyria?
Sure, why not? Valyria would come there.
They like dragon glass, jewelry, amber Ware.
Would there be stuff, Furs, exotic things?
Maybe even the occasional rugged adventurer type would go there
from Valyria. Like sail their fancy Valyrian
ship with their retainers and do stuff, I don't know, go hunting
in the woods beyond the wall. I want to hunt bear beyond the
wall. You know, you never know what
these, like, ultra rich people are going to want to do for fun,
right? Just ask the Sea snake.
You see, good example. The sea snake did go there.
That's a very good example. Of course he went after it was
destroyed, so we don't know. You know, he's not a good
example of someone that would have seen it at its peak, but
still. He is, but he's still a good
example. Kind of like Davos.
Even after it was destroyed, they still went there.
So like would have gone beforehand.
Absolutely, Yeah. So you're you're very right.
So let's imagine a city that existed more than 600 years ago,
and they probably did trade with Hardhome.
It's just kind of hard to imagine Hardhome to imagine that
this place was bustling like that there were ships just
sailing up there. But this we have every reason to
believe that was the case. Just like mammoth pelts or
giants bones. Like there really are a lot of
cool stuff that people, rich people that collect things,
would want unique things very. It's not just, yeah, we we you
can't. You can easily underestimate
that because the free folk are poor.
That doesn't, you know, those things.
You can't spend those things, you know.
But the right collector comes along and was willing to pay a
lot for some of those things. And but with Hardhome having a
port, that was possible. Now they're they, where are they
going to go? I want to buy your mammoth
bones, but I have no idea where to go for.
There's no market for this. Yeah.
So the constant warring amongst the free folk was also President
Hardhome, we're told This is kind of how the tale of Maester
Willis wound down, quote. When Gorham was murdered in a
drunken brawl, however, Willis found himself in mortal danger
and made his way back to Old Town.
There he set down his account, only to vanish the year after
the Illuminations were done. It was said in the Citadel that
he was last seen at the docks looking for a ship that would
take him to East Watch by the sea.
So his maasterly duty, his oath kind of brought him back to
record his knowledge and pass it down to future generations,
which is basically the it's kind of the oath of the historian
there that's kind of your, your quote UN quote job.
But once that was done, once he did his duty, he's like my heart
is calling you back. Dances with wildlings.
This is what I'm thinking here, Nina, says Sorella.
When Oberyn took her Tyene and Ariana to a long, abandoned town
in Dorne, Sorella turned over rocks and brushed sand up the
mosaics, wanted to know everything about the people who
lived there. Was very curious about history.
Yeah. So yeah, Willis as well, He
wants to know all the stuff. This is his.
This is his life's interest. John, too.
I mean John also has this sort of has that understood that call
of of beyond the wall. He he lived with the free folk
and he liked it. He respected them and ultimately
his duty was more powerful. But who knows where his story
will end up. Obviously if you look at the TV
show that's that is where he ended up.
Mance Raider another example born to the watch but felt the
call became the king beyond the wall, but felt it big time.
Called the Wild, called the Wildlings.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, right.
So as we have said, this is maybe even Nina wants to shout
out Maester Willis. This is the order of maesters in
its purest and best form. People who genuinely love study
and knowledge and want to share their expertise with future
generations. Yeah, we we all love this guy.
Three cheers for Maester Willis. I mean the the only other guy I
can think of that's really like this is Marwin.
Like Marwin, just like, oh, that's what happened.
I'm getting on a ship right now and leaving, like he's ready to
go to sail across the world at the drop of a hat that is so the
opposite of, well, just most people, not just maesters, but
just everyone, really. Like, very few people are like
that. Like, yeah, I just got back.
I'm going across the world. I'm out of here.
I'm headed back to, like, Slaver's Bay.
Just there's a ship. I'm going now.
Yeah, why waste any time like that?
Takes a special kind of person to do that, but.
I respect it quite a bit. So something tells me Maester
Willis wouldn't have been one of those maesters saying the giants
are extinct beyond the wall. Like, no, he's quite sure
they're not. But again, more than 600 years
ago. So it's not like his writings
have a lot of bearing on what isn't currently extinct anymore.
You know what? Any current answer just now, he
might have had a kid. Up there.
Oh my goodness. Couple years, right?
You're right. And the relationship he's
allowed to, whereas he wouldn't have been, that might have been
part of the reason he wanted to go, yeah.
I still think I like the idea. I like the romanticism of him
being just, you know, a true, a true ethnographer, a true
folklorist. A true.
Yeah, I I like that idea a little bit more than that.
He had personal ties, which also I think is totally valid it.
Could have been I. Mean.
It could have been both. I'm just saying that when I when
I weighed the options, I decided to throw that option out because
I personally liked the head cannon more than he was.
Just he was just that passionate.
Right on. So many of the same Matrix and
arch matrix would doubt even what Willis wrote because that's
just doesn't fit their world view.
Like they would maybe guess that he was making things up, or kind
of be skeptical about whether some of these things really
happened. That too might have been another
motivation to go back, to bring back some proof.
Like, Oh yeah. He might have had to scurry out
of there quick if there's some conflict with The Chieftains.
He didn't have the same ally. He writes all this down and
manages like get out of here, giants.
And he's like. I'll.
Be right back, but let me bring you some some evidence you know.
Yeah, and we see this a lot in A Song of Ice and Fire.
There's several characters who you could call The Who could fit
into the category of intelligent and competent skeptic who is
very much wrong, right? Like Maester Lewin or Tyrion.
Tyrion's a great example. He's like snarks and grumpkins,
blah blah, blah, you know, come on.
But you know. But when he went to the wall, he
started, he felt a little differently.
Once he stood atop the wall, he planned to pee off the wall, but
he didn't because he was like, he was awed by.
He was too like it felt wrong. You know, he's like, wow,
actually that is vast and scary. And maybe there are things out
there and the perfect example of reading about it on a page
versus experiencing just a sliver of it.
And it's totally changes how you think about it.
So let's talk about what happened to it.
The Doom of Hardhome. It's pretty obvious why I call
it that, because it has a lot in common with The Doom of Illyria
on a smaller scale. We're not talking about 14
volcanoes, it appears to be just one.
But here's what we're told, quote.
Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true
town north of the Wall, until the night 600 years ago, when
Hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off
into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version
of the tale you believed. Their homes and halls consumed
in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the wall
far to the South had thought the sun was rising in the north.
Afterward, ashes rained down on haunted forest and shivering sea
alike. For almost half a year, traders
reported finding only nightmarish devastation.
Where Hardholm had stood, a landscape of charred trees and
burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood chilling
shrieks echoing from The Cave mouth that pocked the great
Cliff that loomed above the settlement of.
Course they don't call it The Doom of Hard Home, but you know
it works as a title. It's a micro version of that and
it does predate The Doom of Valyri.
Don't forget this was 600 years ago as we as it says, where the
Doom was more like 410. So about 200 years apart now,
Ashes raining down for half a year is a very strong giveaway.
This was a volcano, the visual reports of a conflagration, the
sun rising in the north back that up.
Though clearly it wasn't to the level of absolute apocalyptic
devastation. It didn't sink the continent
below the waves or anything like that.
And there weren't any earthquakes that we know of.
There might have been some tidal waves, but we don't hear that.
It's it's entirely possible if not likely.
But they wouldn't necessarily have been huge.
Just something. But Despite that, despite all
the evidence of volcano, it doesn't have to be only a
volcano and we can't just say eruption and that covers it.
It doesn't cover all the bases. For example, like what's this
deal about people carried off into slavery or slaughtered for
me like volcanoes don't do that. That's that's people do that,
not volcanoes, right. So.
I chalked that up to follow up stories and rumors being told.
You know, although it it could also be partly true.
Like if there was a community of sorts there that got mostly
destroyed, some of the leftover people might have ended up being
sold into slavery. Or like we here at Hard Home now
that they're eating their own dead so.
You know, it may be just that may have looked like the story
may have come out as outsiders came in to to cannibalize them
where it may have been they just to were forced into it on their
own. And it could have been like
opportunistic Skagosi who heard about this and we're like, let's
go cook, cook humans. That's even better.
They're already cooked for us. And also it's already part of
culture to kidnap young women. If they if they can't stop me,
then I get it. So like we or the rest of
Westeros or whatever would perceive that as taken into
slavery potentially. At least that's right.
And so it might have just been natural fallout of that culture
up there that we just added our own names.
Plus it gets embellished and made more scary.
Or you know interesting stories and rumors and everything you
know. So the the presence of bodies
alone is interesting though, because you would think that if
it was like lots of lava flow, like there wouldn't be any
bodies left, they would have been consumed, right?
But volcanoes don't always have lava.
That's something that you have to divorce from your mind.
It's not always the case. They often do, but not always.
A lot of eruptions are when magma builds up enough pressure
to burst forth and that magma becomes lava, but not always
right. Here are some contenders for a
natural explanation. A phreatic eruption is when
magma trapped underground comes into contact with an underground
water source. So you got hot magma hitting
water and that creates a huge amount of steam and that creates
a new volcano. It can come from like flat
ground or just hills because of the pressure, but it's the steam
that's escaping, not any sort of magma or lava, that's what burst
forth. So a Friato magmatic eruption is
the same except that some magma escapes but in the form of ash.
And the hard home event is characterized by ash falling for
half a year. So in my mind, my non volcanic
scientist, what is that called? What is the volcanic scientist
call? I forget it's like a it's a
Vulcan right? Yeah, you're called a Vulcan
vulcanist. Vulcanologist.
I don't remember. Anyway, this seems like a very
strong contender. There's other two contenders
that I'm aware of, a Plinyan eruption, which is like Mount
Saint Helens or Vesuvius or Krakatoa.
And the reason it's called Plinyan is because the famous
Roman author and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder was
killed in the Vesuvius eruption. He was trying to save a friend
and their family apparently, but he was so out of shape that he,
he like, collapsed and they couldn't pick him up and he just
died of the gases. Apparently.
There's a couple different accounts of it, so it's similar,
except the sudden steam pressure that happens from the water in
the magma comes from gases that are already in the magma.
So there's additional chemistry going on there and that causes
the reaction to be larger and that's why you have super heated
ash and gas that incinerates everything in its path.
But that's too high a level of destruction like something like
Vesuvius or Krakatoa just left nothing.
It was like just a wasteland that's more like the doom this
there was still bodies and and the trees were still there.
So I mean there was fires, but it didn't burn everything.
So there's still ruins, right? That's implies A lesser level of
devastation. And and or that hard homes spans
a lot of land which is why I was.
True might. Make it harder to build a
townscape or why it might have had 4 liters, but I I still
agree with you that I I think it wasn't quite as massive as the.
Plenium. Just just Plenium.
There was another called a Pelion eruption.
These names are all too similar. Plenium.
Pelion. Yeah.
This is when a volcanic Dome collapses onto itself and then
shoots everything way up in the air and it rains hot.
Ash and fire powerful enough to burn trees and take down walls
and stuff. But it isn't complete absolute
obliteration. So that one's a strong contender
possible, and especially 'cause there isn't an active volcano
apparently there anymore. It does have the screaming caves
or still vents apparently, but anyway, we're not entirely sure.
Just some good examples there. Krakatoa had what was called the
burning ashes of Ketenbang. Ketenbang was a city or a town
that was wiped out by this and it it was hot ash that killed
thousands of people. Just ash, just super heated ash
that killed thousands of people. An entire island called Sabesi
lost its population of 3000 because of this hot ash.
So this is, this is very similar to what took out Hardhome and
this is where it gets really insane and where you could see
like imagine this on a in a superstitious society or any
society, what would this look like to you?
OK, so a year later, a year later, volcanic rafts made of
pumice so that the the, the lava, the magma hits the water
and it solidifies and it doesn't necessarily sink because it's
porous enough and soft enough turns into basically a raft.
Rafts of these pumice were made after Krakatoa and started
floating W many of them turned up on the East Coast of Africa a
year later. Some of them had skeletons on
them. Picture that you're just sitting
there hanging out on the beach, fishing, whatever, and pumice,
like black rafts with skeletons just float up on you out of
nowhere. Like, what are you going to
think like? This is one of those examples
of, yeah, George R Martin doesn't need to invent anything
for this. That sounds like fantasy, but
it's real world. And God forbid if it was a full
moon or. A solar eclipse or something?
Within that same week or a. Comet had passed by like, oh
man, yeah, good luck. I've I've forgotten some of the
names some of the the words to describe this.
But another thing that can happen with the volcano is it
you know as the the lava and and resulting land flow.
You know it's up to it's sometimes water's involved.
It can just push all this mass of earth and material trees and
dirt and everything into the water and it can be congealed
and buoyant enough to float. And I seem to remember that
there was a volcano that made one of these.
There's a word for this and it was like, it was like a square
mile and it floated like hundreds of miles away, too.
Like it's just crazy. The the weird things that
volcanoes can cause and how people in less educated times or
areas would have interpreted this, what it would have meant,
you know? And then add that to this world
where there really is magic, there is magic and Dragons.
For that. Right.
And and we're sort of like thinking about the real world
things that could have caused this.
And Martin was even inspired by a real world thing that caused a
similar thing with the howling caves and all.
But it doesn't mean in this world there couldn't have also
been something mystical mixed up in yes, absolutely like or came.
From The Doom, we even make the same sort of guesses that seem
very valid. Yeah, and so when you hear a
rat's description of Hard Home, it sounds all crazy and and
fantastical. It's not that different from the
descriptions of Krakatoa. And in fact, there's nothing as
crazy as the pumice boats crewed by skeletons.
You know, in George's description.
Like, I don't think anything will arises to that level of
what? Yeah, so the screaming caves,
The Howling caves, What about that?
What's the explanation for that? Well, let's start with a quote.
Cotter Pike's galleys sail past Hardhome from time to time.
He tells me. There is no shelter there but
the caves, the screaming caves, his men called them.
So the screaming caves from the caves could be steamed so they
should be maybe called steaming caves.
Shout out to nobody suspects the butterfly.
Nina reminded me of this post that she did way back when and
it was very informative and and I followed up on it and added to
it. I learned some more extend
beyond this so that was that was a good time.
Back in 2004 on the westeros.org forums there was a thread about
George R Martin's visit to New Zealand and Rotorura Park.
Supposedly George said this inspired a location at the books
at that time again, 2004, which hadn't happened yet, right?
So this is what I said at the beginning.
It's like he he was inspired to create this location over a
decade before Dance with Dragons And this is it.
And when you hear the description in a second here,
you will understand why it's a dead ringer for Hardhome.
Author James Henry Cary Nichols wrote a book called The King
Country, which is named after a region in New Zealand also
called, well, King Country Quote.
Just beyond Waikanapa, Napa, we entered a rocky, desolate gorge,
seamed and fissured in every direction with streams of hot
water, while jets of hissing steam bursting from its sides
marked the site of subterranean fires.
The heated quaking soil was covered with thick deposits of
silica, sulfur oxide of iron, pumice, Obsidian, scoria, and
other volcanic products, and with its sulphurous atmosphere,
fierce heat and shrieking sounds, it appeared as we
entered it like a shortcut to pandemonium.
One of the most remarkable wonders of this region was
Teyana Typo or the Devil's hole, a deep circuit, a deep circular
aperture in the rocky gorge from which a column of transparent
steam burst from a small aperture at the bottom of the
deep funnel shaped hole with a deafening, screeching sound like
the voices of 1000 Friends. Never was heard anything so wild
and so dismal as the human like wailings of Teyana Taipo.
And as the thrilling noise went echoing over the hills, one
expected to see an army of evil spirits spring up around, headed
by His Satanic Majesty himself. There you have it.
Screaming caves. Indeed the devil's whole
unnatural sounding, but quite natural in truth.
Subterranean fires, fierce heat, etcetera, etcetera.
Very similar. That quote expected to see an
army of evil spirits spring up around heat headed by His
Satanic Majesty himself. That's basically what happens in
Hardhome. Army of evil spirits shows up.
It's it's ice instead of fire. There's no Night king in the
book but in the show even has the Satan like the guy with
horns. You know, like even that part is
is represented and a chea, you're a a Hawaiian person.
You probably noticed some of these language similarities to
the Maori. The you know Maori Hawaiian.
There's both Polynesian, so. Yeah.
To be clear, when as he says that I'm born and raised in
Hawaii, I don't really call myself a Hawaiian person, but I
am born and raised there. And so yes, all of these words
are very similar. There's there's Wanapa Napa
versus this New Zealand version, Waikanapanapa, which are very
similar and you'll see tons of similar words across them.
So yeah, like you can't see those words, but Wayanapanapa
and Waikanapanapa really are just AK different.
They're the exact same spelling with just the K inserted there.
So yeah, Polynesians discovered Hawaii 1500 years ago and New
Zealand about 800 years ago. So those are both Polynesian
people. Some of you may have heard that
Jason Momoa, of course, Khal Drogo, who is Hawaiian, also
performed a traditional haka as part of his audition for Khal
Drogo. Haka is an intense dance
normally associated with war or funerals or weddings.
The haka is also a tradition in New Zealand.
So another connection between those two peoples that have a
similar origin. Now here's a crazy footnote
about that quote from our author, James Henry Kerry
Nichols and the King Country. That account was written in
1884. Now, in 1886, Mount Terrawera
erupted. The next paragraph of that quote
mentions Mount Terrawera and the Pink and White Terraces, 'cause
he went there before Mount Terrawera exploded, less than
two years apart. So we talked about Mount
Terrawera almost exactly two years ago on three 2022 in an
episode about Valyria. We talked about the Doom and we
this was the last time that we talked about real life
volcanoes. At the time we said we'd come
back to this when it was time for Hardhome and the the Pink
and White terraces were overwhelmed by Terra Wera and
thought destroyed. They've been recently
rediscovered. They're considered an eighth
world wonder, so they people thought they were destroyed, but
they're actually just buried under all this ash.
So 2 years from now some volcano goes off.
Watch out, yeah. Oh, maybe two years from now,
when's the winners are going to come on?
Maybe that's There's got to be some meaning here, right?
Yeah, something something so that's pretty wild, right, that
we talked about that and this guy witnessed it two years
before. So I pointed that out to
Butterfly on on on her blog there that this guy was two
years before that eruption, which is also an inspiration for
George. Moving on or moving forward with
this topic, the most active geothermal area in the region is
called Tikitary or Tikitary. I don't know how to say it from
a story where a Maori Princess threw herself in this like
volcanic lake and killed herself rather than continue to bear her
abusive husband. Westerners have nicknamed it
Hell's Gate thanks to author George Bernard Shaw, who gave
all sorts of names to all sorts of features down there, which
George RR Martin in turn read and appreciated and incorporated
a bit. For example, he named some of
these like Hot Springs that you can bathe in Sodom and Gomorrah,
Devil's Bath names like that. Now back to Rotorua.
This is where George visited. It's on the northern of the two
major New Zealand islands, and it means Second Lake or Crater
Lake in Maori. It's also nicknamed Sulphur City
or Rotten Rua Because or Roto Vegas because it has a strip,
but because of the the smell of Sulphur, Right.
So circling all that back to Hardhome, it's said that the
screaming caves are the only shelter in the area.
So imagine this, like, we have this very real example in New
Zealand of screaming caves of steam escaping through vents
that are too small for all the steam to come through at once.
So it creates all this sound. OK, so if you have these caves
as shelter, yeah, it keeps the rain and some of the cold off
you. But Can you imagine sleeping in
that with those steam? Like it's probably really loud
and given you don't have the like scientific knowledge to
tell you oh it's just steam. What are you going to think?
You're a wild. You're a free folk person beyond
the wall like that you. I don't think you would sleep in
there. I mean it might just be too loud
anyway. I forget like even if it was
again rock and a hard place type stuff.
You just sleep out in the cold and exposure.
You sleep in the screaming like what?
Ice and fire again. Like you're either you're
steamed to into insanity or you're frozen to death.
I don't know. Yeah, it's just poor free folk.
That's all I got to say about that.
They're just, they're they're doing like Melisandre says they
are doing people. When you read stuff like that,
you're like, yeah, Melisandre is probably not wrong.
In our fandom, there's a lot of theories about Hardhome, like
what happened there. Most of them aren't so
scientific in nature, but we're open to supernatural being
rolled up into this, like a supernatural cause.
A trigger, supernatural trigger or supernatural fallout could be
part of this, right? Something could have encouraged
that volcano to go off. It's still a volcano.
But something could have, you know, given it a push, add a
little extra fuel to the fire, you know, for lack of a better
word. So one idea that's that's
permeated the fandom is that the Faceless Men did it as a like a
test run for the doom. I'm not too big on that idea.
I think it's clever. But these these things are 200
years apart. There's no evidence the Faceless
Men can do that. And we think what happened was
the Faceless Men assassinated enough of the Blood Mages, the
sorcerers who were responsible for holding it all back.
So it was like, it was like removing the safeguards.
They didn't literally trigger it, they just undid the seals
that were holding it back. So I don't know how they could
have done that same sort of thing at Hardhome.
It doesn't really work. So given.
Why they would have? Yeah, Why would they blow up?
Well, again, it's a test run to see if it would work, if they
could blow up this place and they could blow up Valyria, you
know, but. Like, why would they have chosen
a hard home? How?
Because it's a volcano.
Just because it's a volcano? Like where else are they going
to get volcanoes? But but how did they even know
it was a volcano? Well, there's.
Plenty of ways you can figure that out.
Aren't there other volcanoes that wouldn't endanger all these
people's lives? Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. I mean, like you.
Like I said, yeah, I'm, I'm with you.
I don't really think it's that great of a theory.
It's clever, but I don't think it works.
I don't think it holds up under scrutiny, but again, I like to
be thorough, raise these, raise these topics in order to address
them. So yeah, and what about that
stuff about people carrying off into slavery and and all that?
We addressed some of it, but like the cannibals coming from
Skagos just to take advantage of weakness.
Same thing for slavers. Like they might have the
conflagration was visible for mile for hundreds of miles.
So like word would have gotten out and some people might have
understood what that meant like OK and trading ships showed up
there regularly anyway. So maybe just they're on their
normal route and they're like they show up at heart home and
they're like whoa this is something has changed here this
place has been devastated Oh but here's some survivors that we
can enslave something like that And then over time the story you
could easily see how the story became that they that they
intentionally did this. I mean, they did intentionally
take the people, but they didn't know before they got there
necessarily what would what would have happened A.
Ship that you know was a two-month sail away, you know,
by the time they wouldn't have known when they left, they got
there what was going to have happened.
And even if that ship didn't take slaves, when they go back
to where they came from, that story will spread.
Slavers here, the nail. Well, let's go check this out.
Maybe they're vulnerable. That makes a lot of sense, yeah.
And it's the same. And Nina also points out a very
good, very straightforward and smart point, which is that it's
easy to imagine that sort of thing happening at Hard Home 600
years ago, because it's happening there now.
There are a bunch of people there trapped and starving, and
people are carrying them off into slavery.
Hello. OK, so it's it's not.
It's history repeating itself. Not some strange first ever
example of this. And remember too, how the ashes
were falling for months or a year.
So yeah, right. So this would have been an
whatever happened and happened and what's happening there would
have been gone on for a while, right?
That makes sense. It wasn't.
Time for word to spread, yeah. Right.
It's not. There's a volcano on Monday, and
on Tuesday everyone's taken, taken a slave and then on
Wednesday is back to normal. You know, like it.
This would have been a process that spread out for months and
years, maybe, yes. And then and the rippling rumors
of what the reality of what happened, the rumors would have
spread for even generations, you know, and they would have been
embellished and exaggerated. So.
Now, if you want to get a little extra conspiratorial about the
others and showing up there, one of the reasons, it's pretty
straightforward. There's a lot of human, human
souls there and they want to take that.
They want to capture those, kill those people and and make them
undead slaves. A different form of slavery,
right? And we've we've many times
touched on that allegory between regular slavery and undead
slavery and how similar they are.
But if there is dragonglass like Unearthed Shot closer to the
surface because of that eruption, others might not want
anyone getting to that. They might want to kind of, you
know, cut that off. I don't know.
That's just how they think or if they really think at all.
But there's does seem to be some intelligence there.
And they know what I'm pretty sure they they understand what
their weaknesses are. It's not like Superman doesn't.
It's like Superman not understanding what kryptonite
is. He's like, I don't know, that's
all of a sudden I got really weak.
I don't understand why, Like, wasn't it kryptonite?
Like what the others are aware of their that dragon glass melts
them. I don't think they're surprised
when that happened. You know, like, oh, I didn't
know that could happen. So.
So it's entirely possible that's wrapped up in here, but I
wouldn't. I wouldn't go too far with that,
but it's a worthy idea. You know, here's another thought
that I might be reaching. I don't really believe this, but
just an interesting consideration that what if it
was the others holding back this volcanic explosion?
What if there's some other presence there and for some
reason they left? And when they did, the coldness
left with them. The magma was allowed to be
released. Interesting.
It is possible because of what we see, that, that their cold is
enough to tamp down the fires. We do see that in Melisandre's
dream, which we'll get to in the second-half.
So if it can tamp down the fires now, why not back then?
Or what you're what we could be saying is if they needed a
rescue team of firefighters, the others?
Should should should change. To being firefighters.
That's true. One other could shut down a
whole multi stage fire, you're right.
So here's another follow up quote about what it's become
since. 6 centuries had come and gone since that night, but
Hardholm was still shunned. The Wild had reclaimed the site,
John had been told, but Rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins
were haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts with
an unhealthy taste for blood. What is an unhealthy taste for
blood? What is the recommended daily
allowance of for blood when you're a burning ghost?
I mean yeah. Did a doctor sign off on that
statement, George? You know it's it's a bit similar
to language used in other supposedly cursed places like
Aaron Hall and of course Valyria and the other even more volcano
blasted landscape. You know.
So yeah, the the whole talk about ghosts and and all that.
Yeah. So it's kind of standard
language that gets assigned to places that are considered
cursed. I'm not sure we can read too
much into it other than general superstition, but if there are
such thing as burning ghosts or ghouls, then oh Yikes that this
is a place they'd be. But there's I've never seen a
ghoul in A Song of Ice and Fire. They've just been mentioned a
few times. I've seen them in Always Sunny
in Philadelphia, yes. I have heard of them there.
Yes, that's true. OK, let's take a quick break and
then we'll come back with a little more real world volcano
stuff and then dig deep into the good stuff, the theories.
What's going to happen? Everything happening there now.
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Actually, his father did that, but he approved CAN.
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Yeah, it's sort of a mod. I know, I said the whole word.
Yeah, I think it's short for modification, not module.
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Oh, that's an interesting. So I was just, I genuinely was
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I've never heard that. I wonder if it is.
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It doesn't change, yeah. Yeah.
That makes sense. Cool, couple of comments from
Y'all, a nascent novice, says. I really enjoy Sean's idea.
That hard home was quite spread out.
Thus the different leaders call back to Rome being a collection
of settlements that became one city.
Yeah, Rome was a vigil like a lot of ancient cities was that
they were like different sections for each tribe.
And eventually that sort of the tribal distinctions started to
fall off over time. Great call, Dornish, James says.
Also has me in mind of John at Castle Black and Dance with
Dragons, thinking that Sam should be documenting all the
histories and traditions and songs and languages of the free
folk. Ah, yes, I forgot about that.
That's a really good call. Yes, he did say that he did
value it. And that's one of the many
reasons we like John. He he cares about those things
and he thinks of those things. He's like what Lord Commander
before him would have done that? Probably not none, but it's
probably pretty rare attitude to hold.
Dorcham also says also agrees that the hardhum thing wasn't
some sort of test run. It could have provided
inspiration for the face of them giving them an idea like maybe
that, but it probably wasn't their entire doing.
I agree with that. I I think that's a neat idea
though, because they could have seen you know been a witness and
and or heard the stories and then some gear started turning
and it might have taken a couple 100 years to piece it together,
this master plan, but it would be a a good inspiration.
Yeah. So last time we had, we had
occasion discussed volcanoes on the show.
As I brought up earlier, it was in March of 2022.
The Hunga Tonga eruption had just happened.
It was January 15th, 2022. So it was it had been less than
two months old or about two months old.
We decided to wait to discuss it, even though it was such a
great real world example. Great not in a good way, because
it was devastating, but as in a good example, as in a quality
example of the point we were trying to get AT and the data
we're trying to get AT. Because at the time, after only
two months, the world's best scientists were still very much
in progress on on working on it and it has been long enough.
Now let's take you know 5 minutes to discuss what we
learned. Shout out to Virginie, friend of
the show, friend of us, friend of the community who lived on
Tonga when this occurred. And she shared quite a lot about
her experience and and some on the ground data that you
normally can't get someone who actually lived through it.
So we we mentioned the explosion of Mount Tarawera in 1886 that
was AVEI volcanic index of four. Tonga was a four or five or six.
They're still debating it but most people, most scientists
seem to think it's closer to the it's closer to the six than the
four. So maybe 5 is about right.
One of the reasons it's debated it's because it's it's so much
more data they have The modern science is there's nothing like
it. There's never been the equipment
that we have now, which is so much better than what we had
even 30 years ago, that the data that we get from this volcano is
far beyond one any that we've ever had.
Before not just the equipment, but the interconnectedness of
equipment around the world, our ability to communicate with each
other immediately and share the information and so.
On yeah, that's a you're you're totally right to say that, Sean.
That's a huge factor because one of the examples is when it
happened, there were already people getting on the phones,
getting on the Internet, like shutting down ports thousands of
miles away and and being prepared for it was like, hey,
in two hours or so, you're going to get a tidal wave and people
would would know to get out of the way.
They tracked the shock waves of Tonga through Antarctica through
holes bored in the ice. They felt they they, they had
instruments in the ice that detected it there.
So yeah, you're right, Sean. There was just all over the
world they were picking up data and it's just nothing like that
had ever happened when this equipment was available.
So while I still think Hardhome was a Fredo magmatic eruption,
this this one was definitely plenty in.
It's the largest atmospheric disturbance since Krakatoa.
Another mention of Krakatoa and Krakatoa was 1883 and it's the
largest ever explosion recorded by almost any form of
technology. Despite that, like many
volcanoes, it wasn't one eruption, there was multiple
eruptions and modern science despite all this thing failed
kind of hard here. Despite all our technology and
all our tracking, there were several eruptions over 25 days
starting on the December 20th 2021 and sometimes just think
it's still erupting right now. But underwater they declared it
dormant on January 11th. Oops.
That was a big oops, because it erupted again on the 14th and
then again on the 15th. And the 15th was the really big
one. So they were very wrong about
that. That's the one we all heard
about. The other earlier ones didn't
make national global news, whatever.
Or not many places. This is the one we all heard
about. This plume from.
The explosion on the 15th went 58 kilometers in the air.
That's 36 miles. That's incomprehensible to me.
That's crazy. I mean, that's higher than
anything on Earth by far. Yeah, that that could take out
an airplane if it happened to be above it, which would be
unlikely, but could have. There's images.
Way higher than airplanes fly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah. There's images from the
International Space Station of the cloud forming as it happens.
So there's another example that could never have been captured
in 1880 or whatever. The sound waves were heard soon
after in Samoa and Fiji, and that's 500 and 400 miles away,
respectively. 2 hours later it was heard in New Zealand, 1200
miles away, They heard it. There were, there were people
who knew in advance to listen. They're like, you're going to
hear this in two hours. Call here, get on the phone,
say, hey, listen for this. In about two hours, the sounds
were actually heard as far away as the Yukon, 6000 miles away,
9700 kilometers away, the sound of of Hungatonga erupting was
heard in the Yukon. Yeah, shock waves.
At the time we heard the, the shock waves circled the globe
three times. It's going both directions.
So they go around the globe, meet in the and then they hit go
around, meet. We heard it was three times.
It was actually four times. There was also a huge amounts of
lightning. That's a thing that often isn't
mentioned when volcanic activity.
There's lots and lots and lots of lightning.
There were 200,000 lightning flashes on the day of that
volcano. I wonder if that happened in
hard home or at the Duke of Duvalier.
Were there lots of volcanoes that day, I mean, or those days,
the weeks building up? Probably, at least in some of
these cases. Now, here's something contrary
to what we discussed before. Everybody knows that for the
most part, volcanoes can lower global temperatures.
They've done that many times. Krakatoa literally lowered all
global temperatures by 1.2 Celsius, 2.2 Fahrenheit for five
years. That's called volcanic winter,
right? We've all heard of that.
But it's not always the case with Hunga Tonga.
There was so much water vapor in the explosion then it caused a
greenhouse effect and it actually raised the temperature
locally and had a net warming effect on the entire planet.
Which is of course just what we need.
Yes. Let's make it warmer.
Yeah. More global warming.
Great. Yes.
We. So yeah.
Good example. Yes.
Just because we know man made climate change is a thing.
It doesn't mean we don't think natural climate change is also a
thing. They're both exist.
Yeah. Volcanoes can cause tsunamis,
though they usually don't. It's it's often reported they do
but that's just cause. Some of the biggest ones often
have that, but the smaller ones often don't.
This was one of those exceptions, unfortunately.
This was volcano. This was a volcano with
tsunamis. Two people were killed by a
tsunami caused by Hungatanga in Peru, 6700 miles away.
Two people were killed by a six foot high wave and they were in
a truck and and they drowned. There was also video all over
Peruvian and Chilean social media 'cause they all knew it
was coming. Like everybody got on the horns.
Like, hey, in a few hours there's going to be giant waves.
These people in this truck, I apparently didn't get the word
or something. Anyway, 8 to 10 boats were sunk
at a Marina in New Zealand. How far away is New Zealand from
Tonga? Well like 6000 miles or
something like that. Yeah.
A person was also killed in Fiji.
And this is the following day that those boats were sunk in
the marine. So a day later the tidal wave
let the waves sunk these boats. Japan had waves as high as four
feet at Okinawa. Japan is nowhere near Tonga and
but overall this was inconsistent 'cause it wasn't
like a universal explosion in every direction.
It was like some some of the nearest islands didn't didn't
have any big waves at all, yet there were waves in New Zealand
and Japan. So that's wild.
That should give us plenty to ponder, right?
Plumes Fredo. Magmatic.
Plenty in The Potent Power of the Planet.
Yeah, I got a little more alliteration in there for you,
so that really gives you the power.
Now let's bring that all back to Planetos, another P The notion
that volcanoes have a global impact in a variety of ways
reminds us to look elsewhere besides Hardhome.
One of the things we didn't include so much that we didn't
talk about, that's a big deal and it adds to the just overall
horror of the situation is that all that ash and chemical
getting chemicals getting evacuated from the cone, the
volcano, whatever can causes massive water contamination.
So all like nearby drinking water is all going to be not
drinkable in the short term. So like.
No food and no water. I mean that's really bad and
it's it's kind of funny to think about not in a ha ha way that
Hardholm like you think of Hunga Tonga and Krakatoa and all this.
Hardholm doesn't seem like it was necessarily as big as those.
Like it was just kind of odd cause George loves to go big,
which he did with The Doom. So, you know, it's not like he
hasn't gone there, but Hardholm seems, you know, pretty darn
big. But it it seems kind of smaller
than some of these other ones. But still, people might have
heard it in Bravos or Norvos or pretty darn far away.
You know, it still would have been heard and seen thousands of
miles away potentially. It also depends on how big
exactly hard home is like. That's.
Right, right. We don't quite know.
So it could be bigger than we realized, but and it could also
have been more contained than it would have been if there were
others around suppressing with their.
Coldness. They could have done some good
there, those others, you know. So I don't know if there's a
tsunami after Hardhome, probably not.
But if there was, you know, it would have hit Scagos and Skein
maybe. Maybe the Veil.
That's another thing I I wish I knew.
I wish there was like a some consolidated timeline of all
events. That would be awesome.
Ice of Fire like that. That would be a monumental task
to put together. But if we could pinpoint what
else was happening around the world at that year, 600 years
prior? Yeah, that would be cool.
Now, Dragonstone give an example of that.
Dragonstone would have been raised roughly in that era, that
around that same time we can't be again, we we don't know the
exact dates, but it's relatively close.
So Mina has an idea here. Maybe from a more human
perspective. Maybe some people in Valyria,
like heard about Hardhome and then spooked them a little bit.
They're like, oh I don't know maybe don't want to live around
volcanoes anymore. Not like a lot of people.
Most people didn't leave, but maybe a few you know or just a
just, you know a point OO 1% of the population.
We're like, this is bad. Maybe maybe we should get out of
here. And they moved to Dragonstone,
which is also a volcano. So maybe that theory doesn't
work. But they needed, they wanted to
be somewhere where there was volcanic activity because still
Valyrian, they want to have that, especially if they're
worried about Dragons and stuff like that in the long run.
But yeah, so I mean, just think about that.
Like someone in Valyria living around volcanoes sees a volcano
blow up and was like, you know, maybe I don't want to live here
anymore. Either way, it could be
connected. Like the idea of volcanic
activity in Westeros may have drawn some people over to take a
closer look. Yeah, it could have been.
Maybe not fear and running away, but curiosity and going to check
it out. Like what other volcanoes are
there? That was a lot of power, a lot
of fire. We could have done something
with that heat, the blood sources or whatever might have
been like intrigued. Yeah, or maybe just a little
more thinking, a little more mundane.
The the first Valyrians we heard that showed up on Dragonstone
were were traitors. And if they had been trying to
trade up at Hardhome and Hardhome was a you know, place
that you can no longer trade at, maybe there was they saw an an
opening for a new spot even though it was nowhere near
there. I don't know, maybe that doesn't
work. But regardless, one trade hub
shuts down, another opens might be at least tangentially
related. So yeah, we we mentioned it
earlier, but the Sea Snake, he's like the only person we know of
between the explosion and now that has been there.
Surely there are others. Rangers, maybe a Maester or two,
but we don't know who they are or their names.
The Sea Snack. We do know his name.
He took his ship, the Ice Wolf, there.
But he wasn't going just there. He was going all over up there.
He went to Eastwatch. He went to Bravos.
He was trying to find a Northwest Passage.
He was trying to find a way through and around to get to the
other coast above. He He never did.
But it was an interesting and worthy endeavour.
So yeah, let's talk about what we think is coming and just in
case you've gotten crossed up, let's review Book Hardhome
because show Hardhome might have thrown you off a little bit.
Book Hardhome is entirely off page and might stay that way.
Obviously in the show he goes there with Torment and it made
for a very popular episode. In the book, it's just Torment
given the order to go, and he might not do it because Jon gets
stabbed not long after that order.
Torment hasn't left yet. I do want to clarify, it's not
exactly just torment Torment's put in charge, but it's a
contingency of of dozens of people, mostly mostly free fold.
But. But also, nights watch.
Yeah, it was supposed to be both, yeah.
Either way, I would set aside your concept of Show Hard Home
to get at these book events. Though a lot of the basics do
align and some of the visual elements.
For example, I do expect the others to attack the refugees
there. That is probably going to
happen. Mel Melisandre has a dream about
it. We'll we'll get to that.
I do expect they're coming to to be felt by extreme cold, which
is what they always do, and seen in the form of mist, which is
also in Melisandre's dream. The show gave us great Gray
cliffs overlooking wooden walls with flaming arrows, a huge
harbor with ships, which is all right on, that's all right.
That's all what we're told about.
Book Hard Home too. So if you're trying to picture
some of that, which is difficult because we don't see it on
screen in the book so it's like you kind of have to go to
another source. We don't like to use the show
for for things like this but it does happen to fit pretty well
if you're if you're careful with what images you use and which
ones you don't. And the end result will probably
be pretty similar to a victory for the others is probably
likely not just a win and that they defeated the humans, but
that the and a win that they add so many new bodies to their
army. The very thing John tells Bowen
Marsh, the the reason they should be concerned with
Hardhome in the 1st place is that the very addition to the
Others army. He tells them that he tells the
other night to watch officers that, and they just don't really
have an answer for him. They're like the wall.
It will stop them. Like well actually that's not a
bad answer. It might stop them, but it's
still it's still iffy. John's plan is iffy too, to be
fair. Like he he might.
He might be chasing lost money. You know, like chasing losses.
It's too late for this. It's maybe the people at
Hardhome are already doomed. You may not be able to save
them. But let's talk about the dream
and the letter to sort through all this.
I didn't even talk to you about this or put in a document, but a
thought has gone through my mind that could Melisandre's vision
be something from the past. She might not be seeing Hardhome
now. She might be seeing Hardhome in
the past. I no, not big on this.
It's just something that occurred to me, especially
because you misinterprets things a lot.
But I, and I don't know why George would have her have this
vision if it wasn't immediately. Well, let's just talk about
that. Let's, let's talk about that
when we get to the to that point.
So John, John decides he's going to hard him.
He decides he's going to lead the ranging there.
He decides he can't because he then gets the pink letter.
So it's like he gets a letter from Cotter Pike and then he
gets a letter from Ramsey Bolton.
Or maybe from Ramsey Bolton, whatever the pink letter.
And this is some tragic irony because not only does it lead to
his assassination, but it's a loss of focus.
It Harkins back to the final lesson learned in book one?
No. The real war is to the north and
he he he shuns that for the war to the South.
Even though maybe going to Hardhome isn't that good of an
idea. Maybe potentially it's it's it's
not a better idea to necessarily go fight Ramsay Bolton.
The true war is there. So he he's he's prioritizing the
Southern problem over the Northern one.
It's debatable. I mean, arguably settling the
South is necessary in order to properly fight the other.
So that's the thing. Whatever you think.
But I wish. I wish that thought was more
clear in John's mind. Does that make sense?
I wish we got that idea from him more so because that's what I
that's the way I justify what he's doing.
Because otherwise it seems like, like I said, it's such a
distraction. It might even be like a little
bit of power corrupting him, you know, he's, he's kind of in
charge now. He's standing up to the king and
oh, someone's in my hometown. Let me go show them what's up,
never mind what's been driving me all along, you know?
So it doesn't matter necessarily what you and I think the
officers of the watch made their points clear by driving them
into John's body. But before the stabbing, most of
the officers argue that, yeah, John shouldn't care, it's not
their concern, blah, blah, blah. So John's problem is that he
just, it's maybe a literal, as Nina says, the sunk, the sunk
cost fallacy, sending ships there, which is what he does.
The the first thing he does is send ships up there before he
leads ranging. And then Cotter Pike says, hey,
it's going really badly. We need that's the dead things
in the water letter, right. So he's like and Cotter says the
seas are wracked by storms. You have to send help over land.
And that's when he decides to go and then changes his mind
because of the pink letter. All of this is in one chapter,
mind you, not the first letter that he sends to Cotter.
He gets a letter from Cotter that like when Cotter says we're
leaving, we're going there now. And then there's a follow up,
which is the dead things in the Water letter.
All that is John's last chapter in the Dance of Dragons.
To be clear, The dead things in the water letter, the pink
letter, and the stabbing all happened in that last chapter,
all the stuff about Hardham. So that's why I brought up at
the beginning. It's easy to let Hardhome get a
little lost in the shuffle. I mean that one chapter alone
has so much going on, let alone all the other times Hardhome
comes up and and before that or all the other plot lines going
on. So this is similar to it's also
Nina points out the other fallacy.
The other bad idea aspect of this is look at what happened
with the great ranging. They go to the fifth of the
first men. They do all this stuff.
It was a huge failure. It was not a good idea.
It didn't go well. So what is why would this go
well? This, this is, this seems worse.
This seems like a worse idea. Fewer people marching towards a
definitive enemy. Whereas before they were like,
we're going to see what's out there now you know the enemy is
there. Now you know that the free folk
are there starving. You know you don't have enough
food for them. So yeah, what do you do?
What? How do you, how is he going to
handle this? So there's there are a lot of
problems here. Like we respect John for his
heroism if we're wanting to do the right thing, but sometimes
you just can't. And that's where you like kind
of see the argument from the his officers.
I don't agree with him stabbing him.
But you know, like you, we it's like we don't have enough food
for them is a that's a legitimate problem.
Even that is is cold. No pun as this might be.
But even if they go get those free folk from Hardhome and
bring them to the wall, and then they starve to death, that's
still better than letting them die and become part of the army
of Undead and Hardhome. Right.
It's ruthless, but it's true, yeah.
And a large percent may end up starving if they bring it back,
but at least there's some chance that they could try to keep them
alive. Never mind they're being added
to the enemy army, but there's no hope.
There's nothing they can possibly do if they just leave
them alone at heart, home. So there's some chance it's some
way they'll find a way to feed them if they can get them back
to the walls. Let's talk about the letter from
Cotter Pike, the second one, the one that really matters.
As big as they are, Roberts, Will, Rob's Will, and the Pink
letter might actually be all less important than this one.
I've personally find this one more interesting.
It's more mysterious, more captivating.
I know you've heard it before, but this one never gets old.
It's always one of the best quote.
At Hardhome with six ships, wild seas Blackbird lost with all
hands 2 Lysenti ships driven aground on Skein.
Talon taking water. Very bad here.
Wildlings eating their own dead dead things in the woods.
Vivosi captains will only take women children on their ships,
which women call us slavers, attempt to take.
Stormcrow defeated. 6 crew dead, many wildlings, 8 Ravens left
dead. Things in the water send help by
land, seas racked by storms from Tallin by hand of Maester Har
Moon. Wow, that always gets me.
It's kind of dark and heavy, so it's hard for me to make a joke
here, but it reminds me of Kevin in the office when he wanted to
use less words. Send help by land dead things in
Yeah, that's. Yeah, exactly so.
I use more word less work. Fine Blackbird lost with all
hands. Pour one out for old Tattersalt
and the crew he was second in command to Cotter.
On this mission is an actual Nights Watch vessel.
Unlike some of the others which were commandeered this it was
the largest of the nights watch ships and it's the ship that
took Sam and Gilly and and Maester Ayman to Bravos.
So too bad the way Cotter's note just casually and separately
mentions dead things in the woods and dead things in the
water. It's not like back-to-back.
He's like dead things in the water blah blah blah blah blah
blah dead things in the like wait what was that?
You know dead What are you talking?
Yikes. You know And that's how it's
becoming. It's becoming normal to mention
dead creed like Walking Dead. It's just it's not it's it isn't
something you need to explain anymore.
It's like, Oh yeah, that's a thing.
We before it was like what? Dead thing's walking.
That's crazy. No, no, it's not.
It's it's become normal. I mean, it is still kind of
crazy, but you shouldn't be doubting it anymore.
Yeah, And the North, at least it's it's normal.
I wonder how. I wonder how Stannis receives
this. Yeah, right.
Is he considered normal yet? Has he bought in?
Good question. Yeah.
So it's a glimpse of what to come too.
And even when this knowledge gets even farther, when everyone
is just speaking about the undead, as a matter of fact,
because that's just a part of this world, you know, they they
haven't quite become normal yet in terms of people speaking
about them that way, but they're getting, it's getting there.
So there's two Licenti ships to ground on Skein.
Those were two of the ones. Those are, those are two of the
ones commandeered. Rather, those were two leftover
from Salador. San Salador had to leave them
behind because they were not seaworthy and the Nights Watch
just kind of kept them and fixed them back up a bit.
But they weren't in good shape when they left.
They were barely seaworthy at the time.
So will anyone from Skagos learn that those ships landed on
Skein? Is this a Rickon tie in somehow
or just are they in big trouble? Are they going to get
cannibalized? Are the dead things in the water
sailors from the ships that sank?
Is old Tattersall a white now an underwater white?
Yikes. So if we think back on Cotter's
first letter, the first one was that he said, OK, I'm leaving,
I'm going 11. My 11 ship fleet is sailing the,
the and he has 20 Ravens with him, 20 good Ravens and at the
point of this letter he says 8 Ravens left and six ships.
The five ships have been lost and 12 Ravens, I guess.
And although some of them were probably just, you know, sent
back, still, that's like by the time, that letter, it's entirely
possible by the time that John is reading that letter, all the
ships are sung by that. Maybe that's going a little too
far. Maybe a couple survived.
Maybe one or three made it back to Eastwatch.
Which ships? Who knows.
The Bravosi ships might be like, we're out of here.
We're not going to Eastwatch, We're going to Bravos.
We're getting out of here. They commandeered us.
But if we go back to Bravo, what are they going to do, come after
us? The Nights Watch when they're in
the in the middle of this? I don't think so.
So it'd be a way to escape. The quote in there says which
women call us slavers. That doesn't seem to be true.
I don't think the Nights Watch is engaging in slavery, but they
had just experienced that the two other licenti ships, the
good heart and the elephant that we spoke on, they absolutely
were engaged in slavery. So they see more ships with
probably similar design, similar looking people.
They're probably going to think that's more slavers.
That was a consideration John had, too, when he's trying to
figure out how to deal with this.
He wanted to send some women with the contingency to hard
homes so they'd be less likely to be seen as slavers.
Right, you're right. That's very thoughtful of John.
Although again, it's maybe, you know, sunk fallacy that that's a
too much of A pun there. Sunk cost fallacy.
Literally sunk ships fallacy. I also wonder by the way, if
those ships, those Bravosi ships, if they did go back to
Bravos, what the reaction would be because that's it would be so
fantastic. You know, it might take a minute
for people to even believe it, much less think it's a personal
concern. But how close is Bravo?
So would they be worried like because I don't know if anyone
just says, Oh well the the on day I can't get across the water
so we're not worried. They might be a little worried
across the water. Yeah, that that would be the
first question they ask. Can those guys sail?
Do they have volcanic rafts like like after Krakatoa?
Yeah, so it's pretty darn far. It's a lot of ocean.
But yeah, you might be you. You'd be very thankful for that
ocean. Probably in between it though if
you're hearing about things like that.
And also in terms of the slavery, Arya, she hears that
amongst sailors chatting about it that there's probably going
to be more like any ships coming to try to get more slaves.
And partly because the price of slavers has gone up thanks to
Daenerys wreaking havoc on the slave trade and and freeing so
many slaves. And that's partly why people are
going farther away to try to find new ones.
So, and of course, if any if any free folk are brought to Bravos,
they're obviously not going to be enslaved by the Bravosi, and
they might actually end up in an decent spot.
Those who aren't though, I don't know, maybe some of them get
back to East Watch. Maybe some of them do end up on
the right side of the wall and are actually able to help in the
coming fight. Some of them would take up arms
and be ready to go when the time comes, but free folk at
Eastwatch could cause the same problems that Free folk at
Castle Black is causing. I mean there's they're just not
getting along for kind of obvious reasons.
And you don't have a guy like John there to necessarily be the
go between. Well, even Castle Black doesn't
have that now to kind of make that work, if it's even possible
to make it work. So yeah, they're going to have a
lot of chaos at Eastwatch too, given maybe half of their men
were just ground and those who survive might be bringing back
hungry mouths to feed. Or it might be bitter towards
those people. I don't know.
Yeah, it's bad. The wall is in horrible,
horrible shape. And it's not just because the
others are coming, other that's a lot of the reason why the
horrible things are happening in advance.
But still, a lot of it's starvation and winter that it's
not, you know, would have maybe been happening anyway.
Let's talk about Melisandre's dream, because again, we don't
have a first hand POV there. We haven't seen it
straightforwardly. We have to look at it from these
indirect angles. Again though, her visions or
interpretations are not always accurate.
In fact, they're often not accurate.
Sometimes they are, and this appears to be one of those
cases. The details line up so well and
don't really fit anything else that it seems like it works.
It seems like we've got a a winner here in terms of a of
matching the dream to the reality, which sometimes we
can't do. She doesn't know what she's
seeing. So this is our interpretation.
It's not Melisandre saying, oh, I see this, I see this, oh, I
know what this is. No, she has no idea what she's
seeing, but we do because of the descriptions.
In her solitary but very illuminated chapter, Melisandre
asks the Lord of Light for a vision of Stannis for your king,
your instrument. She sees a lot of things.
None of it really seems to be ready to Stannis, but this part
seems to be very related to our subject today quote.
Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky, and ashes rose to meet
them. The Gray and the white whirling
around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden
wall, and dead things shambled silent through the cold beneath
a great Gray Cliff where fires burned inside 100 caves.
Then the wind rose and the white mist came, sweeping in,
impossibly cold, and 1 by 1, the fires went out.
Afterward, only the skulls remained.
Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death well.
Yeah, of course they are. I mean, all the people vanished
and replaced by skulls. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty
easy interpretation. We're worth you there,
Melisandre. But she didn't know what else
was going on. However, that is very clearly
hard home Great Gray Clift where fires burn inside 100 caves,
yes. Flaming arrows arc above a
wooden wall. That's we see that in the show
version which pretty likely they got that from this.
They read this section were like how can we make that look that
way? And despite your your theory
about maybe seeing this in the past, it's possible.
Doesn't really work though, because the others weren't
active then and that's even the free folk would say that, so it
doesn't. That's why we're pretty amongst
Melisandre visions. This is one of the ones where
the most confident about because it just doesn't really fit
anywhere else. Anything else we've seen, it
fits Harlem extremely well and nothing else particularly well
at all. Remember when we talked about,
remember when we covered the TV show and there is Danny's dream
in season 2? It was like their version of the
House of the Undying. And there was that endless
debate over, is that ash or snow in the snow in the throne room?
Well, here we have them both. I love that the Gray and the
white whirling together, dark sky snowflakes swirled from a
dark sky and ashes rose me. Yeah, maybe it was both Then
too. I think we, I think we did
suggest that possibility. That may have been both.
Anyway, I was chuckling at that like this is this is exactly
that moment. Of course, this was written
before that TV episode, so. Especially the context of ice
and fire like both seems you know easily correct.
So the impossibly cold rising white mist, Also that's it's
pretty hard to see that as anything but the others, and in
fact that's exactly the language Torment uses to describe them,
he says. White mists rising up and air is
so cold it hurts to breathe. Impossibly cold.
That sounds really bad. The air is so cold it hurts to
breathe. But there's never been a more
distinct and powerful description of just how cold the
others are than this one. Because what's being implied
here is that the volcano is being extinguished, at least
above the above a certain level. Not like all the way down
beneath the Earth, but maybe, I mean, probably not that.
But the fires that are in The Cave, the screaming caves, were
probably shut off by the presence of the other.
They probably stopped screaming. It's like it went silent because
of them, Which is almost more scary than the screaming of the
caves is when the screaming caves went silent because
they're intimidated by the others and they're cold.
Is so cold, so impossibly cold as it says that the volcano
stops. It's temporarily just too cold
for the magma. Everything just cools off.
It's like, Oh my God, that is way colder than I imagine.
I mean that. No wonder Waymar Royce's sword
shattered. No wonder Tormund's child just
died in the night. No wonder other people die in
the night because it's that cold.
Wow. I mean nothing is approached
that level of explaining just how cold it gets.
I mean whoa so here's something else in in addition to that so
that that's this is the kind of if we're looking at our our
existing grand magic overlap theory, it's almost like this is
the kind of thing that the sorcerers of Valyria would have
done to keep the volcanoes from going off.
Maybe not to this degree and maybe they're they had more
control over fire than using ice to block it.
But it's similar like in concept like they're tamping the fire
somehow. It's like if you were someone's
if you were like a a sorcerer Prince of Valyria.
This is the kind of magical philosophy you'd be studying
like the elementals, how they work together and is it better
to control fire to to to to reduce fire or is it better to
control ice to to battle against fire?
Like, which of these things works better if you're a
spellcaster is the kind of things you might be delving
into. But for us, we're just like, oh,
I have no idea how these things work.
It's just, oh, it's just wow, this is powerful.
It's like 1. It's this one rock meets hard
place. It's not yes, there's the idea
of being caught between the two, but this is what happens when
they actually collide. It looks like hard place is
beaten rock. The cold is overwhelming the
fire. You know the it's another, I
don't know, potential motivation.
The idea that the Children of the Forest created the others.
What if they created them to stop volcanic forces?
Cold powers to counter hot powers, you know.
Yeah, that works. I mean, absolutely.
I mean there's a lot of things about that that that fit.
It's reflective of the others too in their in their nature,
which is that they are a force of nature but turned up to 11
like the wall itself or something like that.
Yes, they are bringing the cold. The cold is a part of nature,
but it's supernaturally enhanced.
So Hardholm has had the full ice and fire treatment. 600 years
ago it exploded and now it's consumed by ice or about to be,
including the very fires of the earth.
Let's talk a little about Mother Mole.
More on Mother Mole or more on Mother Mole.
Which is it? Is she a foolish fanatic who led
her people to ruin or simply the vassal of tragic prophecy?
After all, her vision was right to a certain degree.
Ships did arrive. Technically, some people were
taken South, and if any nights watch ships escape, more, more
of them could escape. But here's where we consider
this from another angle. Rather than considering her and
whether she's being honest or whether which we think she
probably is. But let's consider it from a
different angle. In a world where dreams can be
visited, encouraged, or even planted 3 Eyed Crow showing up
in Brands Dreams, Quafe apparently showing up in Danny's
Probably by Glass candle. Whatever the means, it seems to
be a thing in this world. Maybe Mother Mole was given that
dream by some source. If Bloodraven can go into brand
streams, why can't the others go into people's dreams?
Well, maybe 'cause 'cause they can't, But it's not some crazy
idea that just comes out of nowhere.
It's high magicky, but it's supported the ideas.
There's, there's precedent set for this, yeah.
So why? Come up with a million reasons
why it couldn't be but there is but but you might need to
because there's precedent for it.
So you see how the others would benefit from this.
They trick all these refugees that are scattered all along a
lot of different places into kind of all coalescing in one
spot where they can overwhelm them and add them to their army.
They benefit from this dream far more than anyone else.
It's not necessary, though it's not necessary to explain this.
People doing desperate things and desperate times within a
supernatural setting is not necessary to explain this, but
it fits and George does like to hit us with the both he likes.
Why not both type explanations? Why not have some supernatural
influence? Why not have a little cruel
undercurrent of fake dreaming to to make this happen?
But again, not necessary. Everything works without this
theory. It all could have just happened
the way it does, but I like the idea as potentially entertaining
a potentially way to explain give the others even more like
evil intelligence. Another angle by the way is it
if John or whoever can't rescue these people then it would
benefit the others more than anyone.
But if they can then that would might be AI don't know
motivation of blood Raven right to if he can plant this dream to
get all these free folk in one place where there's a port that
the nights watcher whoever could come rescue them, then that will
stop the others from accumulating all these bodies
around the north that are going to end up dying of starvation
and cold and everything you know so.
They would have collected all those refugees and eventually
anyway, if they were split apart this way, at least 20% of them
get away. You know the the other method,
none of them get away or almost none.
OK, yeah, another rock and a hard place.
Well, it's better to save 20% than 0%, you know?
And and it might also be a a more consolidated force that's
easier for the nights watcher whoever to be aware of and deal
with and etcetera, you know just kind of scattered everywhere at
least there's there's some consolidation for them to know
which direction they're coming from or where we need defenses
to be or how many there are etcetera, etcetera.
And how similar was Mother Maul's dream to Melisandre?
Melisandre is out here asking for vision.
So we're talking about giving me a vision.
Like, she's literally, that's how she interprets it.
She's like, I want visions. Lord of Light give me visions
and they come. Now, whether they're actually
coming from the Lord of Light is something we can't answer, but
it's just another possible explanation for where magical
dreams can come from in this world.
They can be given by higher powers or whatever.
There is some overlap in the two dreams, but there's definitely a
lot of differences. Melisandre doesn't dream of them
getting away. Mother Mole's dream is more
positive. At least she interprets it that
way. Now that's that's possibly the
difference is Mother Mole's desperate and is hoping and is
hoping so she sees it positively.
Where Melisandre, already before this dream, has expressed that
the free poker a doomed people. So maybe she's kind of seeing
what she expects to see. She sees the all the people, all
the death, all the skulls means death.
OK, yeah, that's pretty straightforward.
But that doesn't mean they're all going to die.
That doesn't mean that you know, there's no survivor.
It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't.
She's not. It's not the whole species
there. Not every wildling is in that
spot. And again, but she's not wrong
all the time. And again, the dream seems very
specific, so I'm not sure her interpretation is biased so much
as it is straightforward. But it it might be, you know,
one other prophetic individual who deserves an episode of their
own one day has sort of weighed in on Hardhome as well.
I almost missed this, caught it late last night and I was just
reviewing some of the kind of going back through the books to
start looking for talk about Hardhome.
Reading a little further and I was like, whoa, I can't believe
I almost missed this one. You will recognize who this is
by their manner of speaking, and it comes as they're Speaking of
who will lead the expedition to Hardhome.
I will lead it. His bells rang merrily.
We will March into the sea and out again under the waves.
We will ride seahorses and Mermaids will blow seashells to
announce our coming 000. Everyone laugh.
Even Solis laughs like Solis, who was humorless.
She laughs. But John does not laugh.
I'm with John. Nothing.
Patch face says. It's funny.
Everything says is creepy. Speaks to her bad sense of
humor. Yeah, exactly.
Only like horrifying things make her laugh.
Yeah, into the sea and out again Sounds too much like dead things
in the water. Which patch face is he Is a dead
thing from the water apparently. Like he died and came back.
That is the story we hear about him.
He was the person was like, no, he felt dead That those that was
a dead person that stood back up and started talking in prophecy.
And look at the wording mermaids will blow seashells to announce
our coming 0003 seashell blasts. Excuse me.
Wow. Yeah.
Watch out for Patch Face. See what is why are people
laughing at that? That is scary.
Y'all are foolish to laugh at that.
Yes. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, that is crazy. Oh, oh oh.
Like I said, Patch Face will get an episode one day.
We'll have to do that. But we've also many people in
the fandom, including us, have explore the notion that under
the sea means in winter or during, you know, the long night
or something like that. It's not clear.
But a lot of the his prophecies kind of if you look at it in
that light they fit better or could explain some things.
But anyway that that's we'll save more of that for a Patch
Face episode. Also I'm just kind of you know
I'm one of those people that's kind of scared of clowns.
So Patch face just just picturing him is a little bit
scary. You know like let alone the
things that are actually coming out of his mouth.
Like if you go by Melisandre's visions, blood is coming out of
his mouth and one of them with skulls all around which she sees
as death, right? Same.
What's so scary about that is he's Is that why we haven't done
an episode on him yet? You're too scared.
Yes, that's exactly why you. I've been outed.
You figured it out so hard home's outlook.
Here's where we make some predictions.
Maybe offer some guesses as to what all this means or where it
might be going on the South side of the wall.
Will Torman still lead arranging there kind of doubt it.
I mean, John was just stabbed. I mean, he was like, you go, you
get your group together, but then like 11 gets stabbed, John
gets stabbed, all this stuff is happening.
It might be too late to go. I don't even know.
I I I'm guessing it's not even going to happen.
I think there's a chance that John being stabbed reinforces
it. Tournament might not feel
welcome there anymore. I need to get out of here.
My ally is gone. So I need to go get some of
these guys because they will be my friends or whatever.
They'll at least be on my side. And the others might just have
already gotten there and taken it all.
They may have already that that those refugees might already be
whites. Those ships might already be
sunk. And if that's the case, the
others did have an army already. It might not have been very big.
It was. We saw it at the first of the
First Men. I don't know how many men that
was, but it was certainly enough to overwhelm the 300 members of
the Night's Watch, which isn't necessarily saying a lot because
they picked that spot, the first of the First Men because of how
defensible it was against humans.
They weren't really expecting to face the undead, and it's a
whole different game when you're fighting the undead.
They also weren't that prepared to fight the undead.
They didn't have, like a lot of dragon glass weapons.
They weren't using enough fire arrows.
They started doing that. But they yeah, they were
prepared to fight people. They weren't prepared to fight
the undead. So either way, it was enough
men, enough undead to overwhelm that group.
We're told there's at least 6000 refugees at Hardhome or were.
So that's most likely far more than the others had to this
point. So this is this.
Now that if this happens the way we think, this is their army.
Before they had, you know like a squad.
Maybe they had a a legion, one legion.
Now they have a whole shebang, whatever word you want to use
that describes a large amount of people or Walking Dead.
Same difference I guess. So that this is at least a
tripling or quadrupling. I'm guessing more than that
though. And which brings us back to the
idea of slavers. We'll hear about this location,
and we'll show back up to get more slaves.
What will they actually find when they show up?
We're like, we shouldn't have come here.
Oh my God, what is that? Are those undead?
Like, turn around, Do not drop anchor, Sail back from whence we
came. But maybe they won't.
You know, they probably won't just see that on the shore.
They'll probably show up and be like, what the heck happened
here? And then awful things might
happen. And of course, as we mentioned
earlier as well, I want to repeat the possible notion that
Hardhome could be the trigger for Danny.
The thing that she learns about the big event, the big
swallowing up of many souls that tells Danny that's where she
needs to be. Something's got to bring her N
it won't just be like, hey, we need you.
She's got to hear about like it needs to be suffering.
It needs to be something big. It needs to be something that
draws her her, someone with her personality, a rescuer, as
Tyrion puts it accurately. She is a rescuer.
She rescued Slavers Bay or is trying to.
She will rescue the people of the North if she hears about it
in time to do to do anything about it.
I wonder if she might not be the only one.
She might be the most key and powerful figure, but I wonder if
it might. I don't know, young Griff or
some other Tyrell leader or some, you know.
I wonder if it'll be enough to get the attention of the Rome
in. General the Great.
The great difficulty with predicting any of that stuff is
the order of things happen. Like what about when is Stannis
going to? Is he going to burn his
daughter? Is the knight for it?
Like, what's going to happen as a result of why is he going to
do that in the 1st place? Like, what drives him to do
that? It won't just be bad weather
like it was on the show. Or and what will the effects of
it be? Yeah.
What exactly, What will the effects of it be?
Yeah, like there's a lot we just can't predict.
And yeah, when will Danny hear about this?
Is it during? Is it later?
Is it much later? Yeah, It's just way too hard to
too many moving, just figuring out what's going to happen at
the Wall with all those moving parts.
It's hard enough trying to bring in Danny and Arya and just
forget about it. Just literally, absolutely
forget about it. Just wait and see.
No, we we we won't forget about it.
We will continue to talk about it.
But I'm I'm saying that to acknowledge the difficulty of
trying to theorize about those northern plots.
With confidence anyway, you can theorize a lot, but there's so
many moving pieces it's hard to be super confident.
Yes, The final quote for this episode comes from the same
place we got our first talk of the episode where we we we spent
the beginning with a little bit of Veromeer's POV here.
He speaks of what was happening through the refugees from the
battle at the Wall, Stannis versus Mance, in the aftermath
of that slaughter. They had escaped the black
cloaked crows and the Knights in their grey steel, but more
relentless enemies stalked them. Now every day left more corpses
by the trails. Some died of hunger, some of
cold, some of sickness. Others were slain by those who
had been their brothers in arms when they marched S with Mance
Raider, the King beyond the Wall.
That's a way that keeps happening.
It's a way that George has his character speak of the undead.
It's indirect. Others were slain by those who
have been their brothers in arms.
They don't call it Rarely is the term white used or the undead or
anything like that. It's always like this indirect
dead things in the woods, dead things in the waters.
Thus these, you know, like the way even even Tormund, even the
Free folk kind of refer to them like indirectly like that.
They don't want to. It's almost like using their
name. It summons them, you know, like
makes them more likely to hear you, you know, like certain
people. You don't want to say, what is
it in Harry Potter, You don't say Voldemort.
Yeah, this is maybe that's some kind of thing they don't want to
say. The others, you know they want,
they don't want that word being used.
It's also. I don't know if George intended
this, but it can be vague in another way.
Like some people might have been killed just by formal rivals
that came together under Mance, but now they're back to being
rivals. Or they're starving to death and
they killed each other for their food or their equipment or
whatever else. It might not necessarily be
undead, you see what I'm saying? But but in the context of
everything it seems. Here's another thing that makes
the whole thing a little more terrifying.
Remember that when a lot of Free folk crossed the wall, a lot of
them accepted the offer and passed through the gates.
The Giants were willing to do it, but then they didn't because
the mammoths couldn't fit, so they decided to walk east.
So they're heading towards E Watch.
This puts them not in the this doesn't have them heading
towards Hardhome directly, but it puts them in the path of
where the Others army would be going.
If it went S from Hardhome, it would be hitting E Watch.
Now, they could bypass all this. They could make it to Eastwatch
and be on the right side of the wall.
But it's entirely possible that these giants and and or mammoths
get caught by this army or the others and end up in it and a
part of that army, and all of a sudden that army is even more
terrifying. You got mammoths and giants in
it. I mean, we kind of expect them
to have mammoths and giants anyway, and other animals, but
this is like a whole squad of them, rather than just the
occasional odd addition of a large, lumbering undead beast.
I'd rather have. I'm making numbers up, but I'd
rather have 10 giants on my side fighting against 10 giants on
the other side, then 20 giants on the other side and no giants
on my. Side right, Undead giant.
I mean, that's another one where you can use the the imagery from
the TV show to get an idea what an undead giant would look like
as we see that. And it's pretty damn scary.
It's pretty like how as a human being, how do you face that?
You're glad to have the wall there.
So like, yeah, he's like bashing on the wall.
Like it's not going to breakthrough the wall just by
hitting it. But if if it can get around,
yeah, you're you don't want that to happen.
And there's so many places for maybe the wall to be breached or
the Nights Watch can't cover it all.
I mean, yeah, there's so many ways for them to get around.
And Eastwatch is perhaps going to become a focal point that it
probably deserves an episode too.
A lot, a lot is going to happen there.
There's a lot of figures there. Gran and Pip were sent there by
John. So whatever's going to happen
there, they'll experience it and hopefully they make it out.
You know, as grim a picture as George R Martin has painted for
hardhum, and we've all helped you picture and understand that
grimness a little better. We hope it might actually have a
chance at a good ending right in the Super duper long term,
meaning the end of the series, meaning dream of spring
predictions or hopes maybe hardhum will become settled
again. If the others are defeated and
there's a confidence that they're gone, if not forever,
then well, it might be back, but it'll be 8000 years, so we got
some time. And especially if the wall is
down and maybe winter, maybe it's warmer because I mean
winter is busted by this. Maybe the cycles of winter are
are are changed to something more normal.
Like who knows what the world will look like at the end of A
Song of Ice and Fire, Like weather, like climate may change
dramatically or at least significantly enough, and hard
home was settled even without that.
So if if the outlook on its danger on its climate all
improves, well, that's all the more reason to maybe guess this
will happen. So if it's entirely free from
the threat of the others, you know, maybe it's get that place
open for business again, reopen hard Home Depot, right?
There'll be a need of lots of construction projects and all
that. So, let alone the wall itself,
right? I I I want to be positive.
I want to think that those ships are going to rescue a bunch of
people that torment will get there and rescue more that
probably still a bunch will be killed by the others and taken
into that army. But I, I, I still.
I'm trying to think of the most positive things that could
happen, and it's still pretty negative.
Even if all my optimistic outlooks come true, it's still
going to be an awful tragedy. So Yep.
So it's also got a lot of food like the natural.
It's a good area. Right.
The harbor the. So there's positive there's
there's things that might but maybe the others will just wipe
all that out. But if with enough effort and
love maybe it could become soft home.
Yes. Or yeah make your hard house a
soft home. But maybe those screaming caves
are just too much of A Nope. Like, who wants to live there.
Maybe it's just like I don't want to live there.
It's just the the the vibes. It's just the history of this
place. It's like living in a haunted
house. It's like, you know, I don't
believe I'm not superstitious but people were killed here.
You know, like, it's just I don't want to think about that.
It's not that I worry about me, but like, I don't want that in
my head, in my in the place where I'm living, You know?
I don't want that to just pop in my head every once in a while.
Yes, we'll shut it down. Maybe their their impossibly
cold presence will freeze back the the water and the magma, and
in that shrieking cave sound. Yeah, maybe the the caves won't
be screaming. Maybe they'll just be softly
humming. Maybe they'll be singing nicely,
singing sweetly the sweetly singing cave.
That's what we'll be called. All the positive things, all the
positive changes are yet to come.
The sweetly singing caves of soft home.
That's the future we can dream of in a dream of spring.
That's that's that's our new theory.
It will be called Soft Home and named after it's sweetly singing
caves. Yes, which many tourists come to
visit and spend lots of money and they exit through the gift
shop buying little walrus tusks and chunks of weirwood and
dragon glass. And yes, this is a very fine
future. We've imagined the trivia
question he was who? What is Cotter Pike's ship?
The answer is Talon. You would have gotten that from
the letter where he says from Talon.
He also says Talon taking on water, which is why we may never
hear from Talon again. I hope we do.
I like Cotter Pike. Seems like a good leader, Good,
good man to have on your side. Brusque and and rude, but again,
guy you want on your side. Man, a few words.
Man a few words, yeah. He he not, yeah, and he's he's
not even the one writing those. But Harmon's like you really
wanted to write it that way just just without the the the
pronouns and out the the adjective.
Just the this that no articles. And yeah, I'm not even using my
grammar correctly but neither would Cotter.
So you know, right folks, we hope you enjoyed this excellent
fun time we had with Hardhome. I certainly did.
It's really fun topic, and I think you can see why it's so
important. It's one of the most important
locations that we may never see on screen, although maybe we'll
see it at the end. Like, that would be fun.
If a POV goes there, like John goes there in a dream dream of
spring, like, hey, we actually see Hardhome, all right, Maybe
we'll see it in more visions. Maybe Bran will see it.
Maybe Melisandre will have more visions of it.
There are ways we can see it without going there, you know,
and maybe we will actually go. There.
You know, George has said that he doesn't intend on bringing a
new perspective, right? A new POV correct, 'cause I was
like hoping maybe we'll get Tormons POV when he goes there
or something like that, but. The exception is the prologue in
epilogue, so he's still going to maybe give one offs to there.
So maybe that'll be a way for some hard home action to jump in
in a way, in a way we wouldn't normally have seen it coming.
I'm rooting for the next prologue to be tormented and
hard. Hard.
Right on. OK folks, you there's other
episodes I mentioned throughout this one that will be a good one
for you to carry on with to listen re listen to or listen to
it. The first time the sea snake
episode you can hear about all his voyages including to hard
home Dragonstone. We brought that up as a
alternative and a play thing that happened around the same
time it was founded. We have many questions that
would apply to both episodes. The Doom of Valyria of course is
very relevant here. Our episode on Blood Magic and
our other episodes on Valyria as well during Valerie Radius for
the World of Ice and Fire, where we discussed a variety of topics
surrounding Valyria's origin and fall and in between.
And that included a lot of crossover with this topic,
including the volcano stuff. Sean, why don't you hit us with
some patron names? Yeah, I love this way that we
get to interact with our patrons.
I haven't theme names in this world.
We've got our Hand of the King as a base born man Jack,
literally a drunken Spearman. God's help us.
And I'm assuming that's the base born man Jack that's in our
patron calls each time and I think he came in second place in
our in both. Our Yeah, Ashton got first in
both and he got second. Yeah, there's Lady Buffington,
Alchemist of the North, Lord Raydetto of House Avocado,
Protector of the Royal Kitchens. The words are green in the
morning, dark by evening. Very avocado theme there.
Jake Snow, AKA Jacob Ice Eyes The Bastard of the Last River
and a very simple but known name here, Game of Owns.
They just did. We are patrons of each other and
they just, they just did their trailer discussion for House of
Dragon and they're working on Hedge Night right now.
Or sorry, sworn sword, sword, sword.
And we have another one here. Mallory Sand, Witch of the
Storm, Wolf Rider of Zulfrick, the Black Beast.
That's Sam Rickson misses, and I just appeared on her podcast
recently. Yeah, which is over on Twitch.
They stream on Twitch, so check that out.
You can find them over there. San Rixon on Twitch and you
like. You go over there and follow A
History of Westeros and San Rixon on Twitch while you're at
it. Thanks as well to Nina and you
can go check her out on goodqueenalley.tumblr.com.
Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran for our awesome intros and music
and all that good stuff that makes our show look so
professional. Thanks to Michael Klorfeld for
the maps that you see both in our some of our video intros and
this sitting right behind me, Michael's world map, which you
can buy at Clair docs.de that's KLKLARADOX dot DE.
You buy the file, print it out at your own leisure on your at A
at a local print shop. And that's a good way to do it.
Also thanks to the Benjineer and to of course to my compatriots
Asha and Sean who need no introduction.
But I'll do it anyway. We'll see you all next time for
more and you know what to do in the meantime, Well, our re read
us.