#wow speculation

[hollowwhisperings]

So I've done my first cross-referencing of the sitrep at The Wall, as of the end of Dance, and I've concluded that The Pink Letter IS 100% PART OF THE DAGGERS FOR JON* CONSPIRACY (btw: spoilers ahoy for Dance & possibly the available excerpts of Winds)! BELOW ARE MY UNDRAFTES THOUGHTS & SPECULATIONS ON:

• authorship of The Pink Letter ("TPL")

• motives & means

• flaws & holes of logic for TPL author candidates

SPOILERS AHOY!

(yes, *Jon's murder was pre-meditated: in the wake of his reading out TPL, anyone against Jon would seem anti-Stannis, pro-Bolton, & anti-freefolk. Y'know who's the largest group at Castle Black right now? FREEFOLK. Second largest? MEN SWORN TO SELYSE, QUEEN OF STANNIS. The ringleaders of Jon's murder include the First Steward & the First Builder: these are not stupid men. The Red Wedding parallels are already set up, it's simply a matter of how quickly Jon's Loyalists can rally themselves together to prevent another massacre.)

The top candidates for who wrote & sent TPL are, in the following order: Ramsay Snow (whose name is on it, though not in his handwriting), Mance Rayder (who has little reason to want Jon dead, given Jon's advocacy for his people), and Stannis (who has already tested Jon on the latter's ambitions & is likely happier with Jon "out of the running" and safely committed to the NW). HOWEVER! I have issue with ALL these would-be suspects due to their lacking motives &/or sources of information! Below the cut are my undrafted thoughts on The Pink Letter ("TPL"), its potential authors, and why I suspect them! Enjoy & do send Asks correcting or in response to my speculation!

Before I looked further into the political hotbed that is The Wall in ADoD, I had a weird gut feeling that SELYSE sent TPL: she's Southron and thusly ignorant of the Northern Houses (e.g. flaying is House Bolton's signature move, it should be the go-to torture mentioned in TPL rather than its only being referenced once)... and that's pretty much all I have, aside from Selyse's disliking bastards & being at The Wall. Selyse is AT Castle Black & thus vulnerable to the inevitable fallout of TPL & Jon's murder, TPL claims her king (& source of power) is dead, and Jon's being Lord Commander of the NW means Stannis has a base of operations & tangential support in The North (all the more crucial given The Golden Company's storming the Stormlands). So... Selyse (or the likelier Melissandre, who Selyse would likely be following the will of anyway) does not benefit from neither TPL nor the "let's stab Jon" conspiracies.

Tbh, the ones who stand the most to gaij through Jon's murder & the subsequent fallout are The Others but, like. I doubt that they use the same communication methods as maesters or humans in general. It would be HILARIOUS if there was some random Other in Hardhome holding Eastwatch's maester hostage and dictating a letter to be sent to destabilizd Castle Black's defences but. Like. Unless the 3EC is in cahoots with Others & Bra[i]nwashing is involved, I'm pretty sure the Others are not part of any human conspiracies.

The one who most obviously stands to benefit from Dead Jon & the chaos caused by TPL is, obvs, Roose Bolton &/or Ramsay Snow. Given the former's previous involvement in the RW conspiracy, it would make sense for him to be involved with this clearly paralleled conspiracy too. However - Roose KNOWS his son well enough to mimic his letter writing style accurately (& Lord Bolton is unlikely to risk his end of a conspiracy with Shabby Work) while Ramsay, obvs, WOULD WRITE A LETTER IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING & STYLINGS (he attaches flayed skin to his post, for one, & his stylings are seen earlier in Dance due to his writing one to Asha). So. Not Ramsay, possibly Roose but too shoddy to be his work.

Weirdly, it strikes me as being more likely that some spooked Frey stationed at Winterfell was roped into the existing "kill & replace the Stark Lord Commander, sabotage King Stan, kill some wildlings" conspiracy by Clydas (Castle Black's stand-in maester while Sam gets his degree, former steward to Maester Aemon, almost certain Lannister informant, muller of suspiciously narcoleptic wines). I've not yet cross-ref'd the current occupants of Winterfell & it's plausible that one of those sent out to meet Stan for The Battle On Ice prepared the letter earlier to send in their absence (so, like, Ser Hosteen or Ser Aenys except Hosteen is nicknamed "Ser Stupid" while Aenys' enemies actually consider him dangerous). I will not at all entertain the fancy that Little or Big Walder Frey penned TPL because they are Literal Children & were/are Ramsay's SQUIRES and thus in the horrific position of knowing EXACTLY the sort of tortures that dude gets up to. The issue with a Frey penning TPL is that, unless they were first schooled on freefolk terminology & current affairs... a Frey wouldn't know enough to be so weirdly fixated on Team Spearwife. A Frey WOULD have reason to neglect Princess Shireen but specifically name & consider Selyse Florent and her Red Woman too.

I don't know if The Weeper (who's clearly got his own anti-NW agenda going on despite the otherwise established ceasefire between Mance's freefolk & the NW under Jon's command) has access to or knows enough about ravenry & the communiques of kneelers... but HE would certainly have motive & enough knowledge (assuming he has informants/spies at The Wall, maybe that boar skinchanger's got a raven on the side) to send a bad forgery addressed to Castle Black. It requires a bit of handwaving regarding logistics (the anti-Jon NW brothers would NOT be co-ordinating with the likes of The Weeper) & sources of information.

Then there is the scariest prospect of them all: Patchface. The issue there is that... there's no way Bowen Marsh or Othell Yarwyck would rely on a literal fool for their very carefully plotted conspiracy. So Patchface teaming up with Euron in a Grand Great Other/Drowned God Chaos Conspiracy is, thankfully, NOT something to worry about in THIS instance, anyway.

The likeliest writer of TPL, now that I've actually looked at the different factions at The Wall & what motives they have for removing Jon from command is... the current Commander of Eastwatch, friend of Alliser Thorne, and almost certain member of Bowen & Othell's anti-Jon conspiracy. Cotter Pyke, the official commander of the castle & port, is currently living a horror film at Hardhome (good GODS am i terrified of all things Hardhome: even reading its wiki page gives me the heebie-jeebies)... but so is the resident maester of Eastwatch. It is very plausible & even LIKELY that, like Castle Black has Clydas to stand-in for Maester Aemon & Novice Sam, the assisting steward of Eastwatch's maester can attend to the rookery and send letters at need.

Some Sauces & Side-Commentary:

• [the] Wiki of Ice and Fire, for book extracts, quick checks on "is this character still alive and, if so, where are they currently", and general cross-referencing.

• Alt Shift X & Preston Jacobs introduced me to the Pink Letter & Daggers For Jon theories, over on The Youtubes, and aided hugely in my getting my head around all these angsty middle-aged white dudes complaining about the cold involved.

(unsurprisingly, it's easier for me to remember & name the likes of Satin, former sex worker & likely closet key to teen Jon's dormant bisexuality, and Three-Finger Hobb, resident Team Dad of Castle Black, as opposed to... the dude what my conclusion concluded his colluding he done did)

[regalgorgon]

Question: what vision did the Val’kyr see when Arthas was killed and Bolvar replaced him? Why would they suddenly lose allegiance to the Scourge and favor Sylvanas when she just wanted to kill herself instead, so they saved her?

My theory/answer: Helya. Helya wanted to somehow, and for some reason control Sylvanas because she saw something. And with the information we got between Eyir and Helya with the Val’kyr and all that, it would make sense those Val’kyr still held some loyalty to the Vrykul and upon breaking free of the Lich King’s will, was able to hear either Eyir or Helya in that moment (probably Helya, honestly, let’s be real). So thus, the Val’kyr serve Sylvanas but probably just serve Helya.

And it would make sense that no one admits to beckoning Vol’jin’s soul. Maybe Bwonsamdi figured it out. Maybe that’s why he wants Sylvanas killed, truly. Hell she’s the reason the Alliance came to Dazar’alor. If she hadn’t tried meddling, Bwonsamdi would have more power over the throne. She threatens that ownership.

And naturally, he would assume this is all Helya’s doing. After all, they have that rivalry going on. 

:tinfoil hat:

[ramavatarama]

Thoughts on the start of the faction war.

Wondering about why Teldrassil gets burned. It makes little sense for a forsaken led Horde to incite a war on Kalimdor and leave themselves open on the EK for retaliation.

-Teldrassil is retaliation for something else.

-Sylvanas isn’t the instigator, and has to attack the Night Elves in an “eye for an eye” scenario because the rest of the horde demands blood.

-Sylvanas objective is Stormwind, we don’t know why, but attacking Teldrassil first goes against her personal plans.

-Also where the night elves go? Ashenvale? 

-Is this all linked to the Nightborne joining the horde with the Highmountain? It’s odd that the two races of the Broken Isles join one side.

-What if the night elves attempt (and maybe succeed) to lay claim on Suramar, which manages to completely put the nightborne on the Horde side? if the Highmountain and Nightborne see this aggression as the reason to join the horde, the burning of teldrassil is the first retaliation on the escalating faction war.

-I do like the idea of the night elves trying to reclaim their ancient holdings on the Broken isles, an attack on Suramar preventive as they see the relationship between nightborne and blood elves grow too close.

Honestly I just want compelling reasons so it’s not all black and white and there is some sort of nuance here, and tbh, the only way i’d be okay with the night elves loosing teldrassil is if they gained control over other places, like their ancestral homes.

[ramavatarama]

Jaina is a not a Dreadlord, but what if she wants people to think this?

Roll with me for a second. The whole Jaina hating the Horde has not been nuanced at all (more like flip flopping a lot after she learns to let go of her hatred each book) it’s almost jarring, and such a sticking point that everyone thinks it means something; that she will go evil, that she is a dreadlord. Maybe it’s Blizzard not making up their mind. But what if Jaina herself is hanging that lamp above herself?

What would be more enticing for the Legion that one of Azeroth’s most powerful spellcasters being so thoroughly disillusioned? So ripe for the taking? Maybe too much so. What if Jaina -with just a few confidantes in the know- is attempting to play the legion so they make contact with her?If there is something the heroes of Azeroth have never had, is an insider on the upper echelons of the Legion. Jaina would work her way up, sacrificing everything along the way in her push to strike at the Legion from the inside at the right moment. 

[rumze]

I hope Darnassus and Undercity are going away but only so they can come back later in a revamped version of New D and New U

New Darnassus in feralas built with moving ancients with rooftops for shops and worgen districts. Perhaps with districts themed around different biomes

New undercity in south shore built around dalaran crater with brill architecture on top and the city built into levels into the cliff face of the crater and a central spire from the crater with zeppelins at top and bat roosts along the side

[valzilla-the-keen]

Dude, y’all looking at this Illidan the Savior thing all wrong.

Remember how Anakin was prophesied to bring balance to the force? But then what did he do: he killed all the Jedi and spent the next 20 years as a Sith Lord until his kid took him out.

Maybe that’s how Illidan’s a savior to Azeroth. By killing all the old heroes like Malfurion and Thrall and owning Azeroth until one of his children (like Altruis the Sufferer) takes him out.

Just throwing it out there!

[zirnesttheshaman]

I absolutely LOVE speculation about expansions/characters/quests/etc. in the world of warcraft I love hearing fan theories about who a character really is or where we are going next I love reading all these well thought out and carefully noted essays linking so many things that seem insignificant together almost seamlessly I LOVE IT!!!! I WANT TO HEAR ALL OF THE THEORIES! !!