Hey, I love reading your essays and I completely agree with your love of Quentyn. I'm curious about your feelings on house Hightower. Do you think they have any influence on the Citadel and the Faith of the Seven? And if so, do you think that influence has any impact on Westeros society as a whole? Also, I'd LOVE to hear more about the eldritch apocalypse you've mentioned, and how that might relate to the Hightowers.
The Hightowers are still nigh-unquestionably themost powerful lesser House in Westeros, but the fact that their current lordhas spent the last decade with his head quite literally in the clouds hints ata fair amount of decay incurred in the years since the familyâs dizzying heightsand catastrophic lows in the Dance of the Dragons. Whatever influence HouseHightower wielded over the Faith was greatly diminished by the transference ofsymbolic and practical authority from Oldtownâs Starry Sept to the capitalâsGreat Sept of Baelor. As for the maesters, they were driven to kill off theremaining dragons by the horrific consequences of the dragon-war HouseHightower instigated, so I imagine relations between the Citadel and theHightowers have been somewhat frosty ever since.
What will befall the present-day Hightowers?They rule over Oldtown, the second largest municipality in Westeros and athriving center of trade, yet they rely on the Redwynes to shelter city andcoast from the Ironborn. This protection will vanish when Euron shatters LordPaxterâs fleet early on in The Winds ofWinter, possibly by magical means. If the rumors about Lord Leyton (and hisdaughter Malora) are close to true, the Hightowers are looking to the oldpowers to serve as their cityâs savior, rather than its doom.
Theyâre going to be rather dramaticallydisappointed, and this is where we get into my beloved Eldritch Apocalypse. Come,sweetlings, plunge into the abyss of insanity with me! (Watch for tentacles.)
In the first three books, it was clear that themetaphysical threat came from the North. But simmering under the surface of AFeast for Crows and The Worldof Ice and Fire is a stunning reorientation of this driving tension.There is now a second and pointedly southern locus of cosmic horror, equally likely as the Wall to serve as a portal which, after standing closed for millennia,finally gives way and lets the nightmares in.
Quoth Adventure Time: âBefore there was time,before there was anything, there was nothing. And before there was nothingâŠtherewere monsters.â
Even the Asshai'i do notclaim to know who built their city; they will say only that a city has stood here since theworld began and will stand here until it ends. Few places in the known worldare as remote as Asshai, and fewer are as forbidding. Travelers tell us thatthe city is built entirely of blackstone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all. Somesay as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, thatit seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike.The nights are very black in Asshai, all agree, and even the brightest days ofsummer are somehow grey and gloomy.
Maestersand other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the enigmas ofSothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. Aruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavythat it would require a dozen elephants to move them, Yeen has remained adesolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it onevery side has scarce touched it. (âA city so evil that even the junglewill not enter,â Nymeria is supposed to have said when she laid eyes onit, if the tales are true). Every attempt to rebuild or resettle Yeen has endedin horror.
Onthe Isle of Toads can be found an ancient idol, a greasy black stone crudely carved into the semblance of a gigantictoad of malignant aspect, some forty feet high. The people of this isle arebelieved by some to be descended from those who carved the Toad Stone, forthere is an unpleasant fishlike aspect to their faces, and many have webbedhands and feet. If so, they are the sole surviving remnant of this forgottenrace.
Whenthe daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, herenvious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself theBloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts,torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride,feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.
Thethrone of the Greyjoys, carved into theshape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to have been found bythe First Men when they first came to Old Wyk.
Evenmore enigmatic to scholars and historians is the great square fortress of black stone that dominates that isle. Formost of recorded history, this monumental edifice has served as the foundationand lowest level of the Hightower, yet we know for a certainty that it predates the upper levels of the towerby thousands of years.
Aneven more fanciful possibility was put forth a century ago by Maester Theron.Born a bastard on the Iron Islands, Theron noted a certain likeness between the black stone of the ancient fortress andthat of the Seastone Chair, the high seat of House Greyjoy of Pyke, whoseorigins are similarly ancient and mysterious. Theronâs rather inchoatemanuscript Strange Stone postulates that both fortress and seat might be thework of a queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seasupon human women. These Deep Ones,as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown,he argues, whilst their terrible fathersare the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.
Aeron Greyjoy is desperate to unseat Euron from the Seastone Chair. But given that it was the Damphairâs own kingsmoot thatlegitimized Euronâs rule, that (as Victarion points out) Aeronhimself placed the driftwood crown on Euronâs head, I donât think the populistcrusade Aeron launched in Feast willsucceed. Instead, he will be forced to beg the Drowned God to directly intervene.And the priestâs god will answer his prayersâŠbut said deity will turn out to bea Lovecraftian abomination, promptly unleashing hell on âthese holyislandsâ before turning his baleful gaze on Oldtown.
And yet, and yet, Câthulhu is just the beginning. He could verywell find the city already in ruins and have to turn and shrug exaggeratedly atthe camera while a sad trombone plays.
Why? Because there is a Faceless Man in the city, and hehas a skeleton key. Because heâs probably after âthe fragmentary, anonymous, blood-soaked tome sometimescalled Blood and Fire and sometimes The Death of Dragons, the only survivingcopy of which was supposedly hidden away in a locked vault beneath theCitadel.â Becausethere is a one-man-apocalypse pirate king in the neighborhood, and heâs goingto get a dragon. Because the maesters have some awful secrets, and I shudder tothink what they will do to protect them. Because Sam is unknowingly carryingaround the horn that could bring down the Wall. Because, as mentioned, theHightowers are messing with magic they will inevitably prove unable to control.Because the glass candles are burning, and as with Sarumanâs palantir, âwe donot know who else may be watching.â
Anyone of these could produce a city-wide cataclysm. But all of them together? Thatâs a recipe for a feverishoverripe horror crescendo that has me so excited I can barely breathe. Now, Icould speculate as to the specifics of how these elements will interact, but toborrow from boiledleatherâs must-read meditation on the Deep Ones and cosmichorror in general:
The world ⊠about whichMaester Yandel writes is in a very important way just a series of trapdoorsthat drop you directly into nightmare after nightmare. The drop is the point,not the floor that connects them.
Iâmnot saying we shouldnât theorizeâshit, what else am I doing right now? Iâmsaying that whatever theory you can hash out and write down is likely besidethe point. The point is how it makes you feel. Do you feelthat something of tremendous, awesome importance has happened that you cannever fully understand? That there are forces at work in this world beyond eventhose of the Others and the Children, beyond R'hllor and the Seven and the OldGods, beyond the Stranger? That you are, in some fundamental and inescapableway, at sea?
Thesea is the point. Not the land you could perhaps construct amid the sea,holding it at bay for however longâthe sea. The sea. THE SEA.
Magic has been leaking back into this world in quick,isolated bursts; a shadowbaby here, an increased wildfire output there. InOldtown, come The Winds of Winter,itâs all going to flood in at once. Thereâs a meta component to this aswell: GRRMâs been largely holding back his peerless horror chops but forisolated exceptions like the Red Wedding and the wight attack at the Fist ofthe First Men, and so the Sam and Aeron chapters in Winds will constitute the full unveiling. (Part of me thinks thatâswhy he left those POVs out of Dance:he wanted to take his time, do it right, and unleash the horror whole.)
Donât get me wrong, Iâm eagerly anticipatinâ the storylinesset in Winterfell and Kingâs Landing and the Dothraki Sea as well, but nothing compares to the Second Doomabout to ravage southwestern Westeros. It is going to sear my soul and break mybrain and leave me gibbering in the proverbial corner, and I simply cannotwait.
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