What Was the Hammer of the Waters? Westeros Disaster Hunters - Ice and Fire Theory

what was the Hammer of the waters was it an earthquake a flood a little of both well perhaps something far worse or are the maesters ever skeptical perhaps correct in their assertion that the real culprit for the sinking of the arm of Dorne was simply gradual sea level rise not very exciting but it does happen and if the Hammer of the waters was a great cataclysm a sudden disaster was it in fact called down by the green Sears of the children of the forest as Legend says did the children really conduct some sort of horrific Act of mass blood sacrifice and blood magic on the Isle of faces again as Legend says and what about the conflicts in the Legends where some say the hammer was called down not from the Isle of faces but instead from Mount Kalin which by the way is the weirdest place in Westeros where there are perhaps two separate Hammer events or were the neck and the arm of Dorne perhaps flooded at the same time was the neck even flooded at all or maybe has it always been a swamp and what about the iron islands where we have Legends of floods and potential signs of cataclysm lurking about as well and why is This Disaster Hunters of ancient Westeros exploration that we're about to do going to lead us to discover the secrets of the Uber mysterious oily Black Stone well you better watch this video and find out because this is my absolute wheelhouse right here and we're not even going to use symbolism that that much foreign [Music] fought back as best as they could but the first men were larger and stronger riding their horses clad and armed in bronze the first men overwhelmed the Elder race wherever they met for the weapons of the children were made of bone and wood and dragon glass finally driven by desperation the little people turned to sorcery and besieged their green Sears to stem the tide of these Invaders and so they did gathering in their hundreds some say on the Isle of faces and calling on their old gods with song and prayer and grisly sacrifice a thousand captive men were fed to the weirwoods one version of the tale goes whilst another claims the children used the blood of their own Young and the old gods stirred and Giants awoke in the earth and all of Westeros Shook and trembled great cracks appeared in the earth and the hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up and then the Seas came rushing in and the arm of Dorn was broken and Shattered by the force of the water until only a few bare Rocky Islands remained above the waves the summer sea joined the narrow Sea and the bridge between essos and Westeros vanished for all time or so the legend says hey guys David lightbringer here new studio new haircuts and we're talking about the Hammer of the waters one of my favorite topics and guys you know that if you've been watching this channel one of my favorite things that George Martin has done in creating His World building the World Behind A Song of Ice and Fire is to mimic the way our own ancestors tend to create Legends and folk tales around natural cataclysms So In A Song of Ice and Fire the cataclysms of course tend to be magically induced as opposed to Natural but the cultural phenomena is still the same when man's world trembles Burns floods freezes or turns dark the survivors remember the trying times through their Legends and folk tales earthquake of course is certainly a descriptive and accurate term but how about and Giants so woke within the Earth and that's got some punch and that's what we call a mythical description of a natural disaster Giants awaking in the Earth the long nights of course is the disaster of all disasters and as we learned in the world of Ice and Fire back in in late 2014 the long night was apparently experienced throughout the known world or perhaps we might say throughout the half of the northern hemisphere that we see on the big map from the lands of Ice and Fire that's right in case you didn't hear the long night was not just a Westeros thing the roinish experienced it in western essos and then the yitish and the asshai also experienced it in Far Eastern essos and somewhat further south of Westeros it should be noted so this really is either a global winter and darkness or at least a northern hemisphere winter and darkness and thus we can look past the more exotic and colorful details of stories about the others and the last hero or the yitch story of the woman with a monkey's tail or the ruinish one about the turtle and the crab Gods singing a secret song to bring back the Sun that's a good one um and observe that yes some sort of Global Winter did occur thousands of years in the past one that was significant enough to stand out in the cultural memory of people all around the world so it definitely happened now the Hammer of the waters the collapse of the land bridge between Westeros and essos which was known as the arm of Dornan and is now known as the broken arm of Dorne titles titles is another such disaster Legend and it's really the only thing that you can compare to the long night apart from the far more recent Doom of valyria which actually qualifies as a historical event since we have eyewitness accounts on record as opposed to 8 000 year old Legends and folk tales so the Hammer Of The Waters wasn't quite a global event like the long night although we will talk about the ramifications of altering the major ocean currents later the hammer was a very large Regional event and thus we can use the same sort of disaster Hunter approach that we just did for the long night to try to begin to determine what actually may have happened here for example the first question about the Hammer of the waters is posed To Us by the maesters later on in the passage that we just quoted from and they're essentially asking whether we are speaking more about a cataclysmic collapse of the arm of Dorne or simply about the gradual rise of the ocean levels put simply was there a great flood or was this more like the Bering Strait land bridge between Siberia and North America which was open when sea levels were lower approximately 15 000 years ago or so but which gradually disappeared under the waves as the planet thought out from the recent Ice Age and sea levels Rose approximately 300 feet to their current level there are definitely some loose parallels between the children of the forest and the first men the Native Americans and the coming of Europeans so perhaps that's part of Georgia's inspiration I would say that it definitely is so maybe it was a gradual rise in sea level like like the Bering Strait land bridge but thing is this is is a fantasy novel and since we know that the maester's skepticism regarding all things magical is kind of written into the story as an in-world plot device we're initially inclined to think that there probably was a disaster I mean it's just a more fun answer right and it's kind of consistent with the maesters not believing in the others or prophecy or that sort of thing but we want a better answer than that right not just disagreeing with the maesters because the maesters are usually wrong about magic well good news there's one to be found in another nearby Legend which is that of Duran God's grief Fair elenae the founding of Storm's end this is one of the best ancient legends that George has written for his own world and it comes from a Catelyn chapter of a Clash of Kings now as you listen to this try to think like a historical disaster Hunter if you will and look for bits of the story that might be usable information about what really happened the song said that Storm's end had been raised in ancient Days by Duran the first Storm King who had won the love of fair Elena daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the Wind on the night of their wedding Elena had yielded her maidenhood to Immortals love and thus doomed herself to a mortal's death and her grieving parents had Unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and Waters to batter down Durham's hold his friends and brothers and wedding guests were crushed beneath collapsing walls or blown out to sea but Elena sheltered Duran within her arms so he took no harm and When the Dawn came at last he declared war upon the gods and vowed to rebuild five more castles he built each larger and stronger than the last only to see them smashed asunder when the Gale winds came howling up shipbreaker Bay driving Great Walls of water before them his Lords pleaded with him to build Inland his priests told him that he must placate the gods by giving Illinois Back to the Sea even his small small folk begged him to relent Duran would have none of it a seventh Castle he raised most massive of all some said the children of the forest helped him build it shaping the stones with magic others claimed that a small boy told him what he must do a boy who would grow to be bran the Builder no matter how the tale was told the end was the same though the angry Gods threw storm after storm against it the seventh Castle stood defiant and during God's grief and fair Eleni dwelt there together until the end of their days gods do not forget and still the gaels came raging up the narrow sea yet storms end endured through centuries and tens of centuries a castle like no other all right so besides the heartthrob forbidden Romance of Fair Illinois and during God's grief what actual information do we have here well first of all it sounds like the tale is describing a huge storm obviously but not just a storm there's definitely a flood here too or maybe a tsunami as the tale speaks of winds and Waters battering down Durham's hold in fact it sounds like a real disaster the winds and Waters actually destroyed his castle and everyone inside was killed save for Dern and Illinois so one time a thing occurred to me what's real and what's for sale sorry child of the 90s um could this story about a tsunami and a flood at Storm's end actually be the other end of the Hammer of the waters flood after all if you look at the map here um you can see that the collapse of the arm of Dorne was really a huge section of land and in fact this sea of Doran right here the maesters are very certain based on fossils that this used to be in a freshwater Inland Sea which means the land that collapsed connected all the way up here to the south of the rainwood somewhere near Cape Wrath so if any large part of this land bridge or this land area this little triangle chunk of land if any part of that collapsed suddenly and catastrophically then it would indeed have sent huge tidal waves walls of water just as the legend says racing up the newly formed narrow sea to smash into various Jets of land all along the way such as Storm's end in other words we should find Legends of one Titanic catastrophic flood and storm in this area and that's just what we have in the Durham God's grief Legend and I bet if we could go myth hunting up the shores of essos there we'd probably find a few more flood myths but we'll see now the most important part of this idea that the durian flood is the Hammer of the waters flood is the implication of a changed weather pattern in the during God's grief story so when the arm of Dorne collapsed it joined the cold shivering sea and its Southern extension the narrow sea to the much warmer summer sea and that would have permanently altered the weather patterns of the area and actually the entire world I mean just think of our own Mid-Atlantic current which is basically the only reason why Europe isn't as cold as Canada and of course if that current or system of currents ever were to collapse due to climate change then Europe could get much much colder so back over in Westeros we have a very dramatic example here of changing ocean currents when these two Seas met and put the ocean motion to the potion when they mingled their Waters like absu and Tiamat of Babylonian Legends that's right mingling of the waters it's it's very sexy and this would indeed have permanently altered the weather of the narrow sea in particular just as is recorded in the during God's grief Legend and what I mean is that there was first one big storm and flood and then Ever After the storms came raging up the narrow sea so it's a changed weather pattern that comes after the cataclysm and that's exactly what we'd expect to find if the Hammer of the waters and vent involved a sudden collapse of the arm of Dorne so that's pretty much a disaster Hunter home run it seems there was some sort of sudden land collapse a subsequent tsunami in this area which was Then followed by a permanent alteration of the weather patterns due to the change in the ocean currents now as I mentioned at the beginning the Hammer of the waters Legend is also associated with the neck and moat Kalin specifically it is suggested that a hammer of the waters event is what turned the neck into an inhospitable boggy swamp that only the crown of men can survive in for any length of time at the Northern end of the neck swamp sits moat Kalin one of my favorite places by the way it just couldn't be any cooler and mode Kalin is of course a largely ruined Black Stone Fortress built out of huge Basalt megaliths many of which or most of which are now I was scattered about the swamp some Legends say that the hammer either the Hammer of the waters or second Hammer it's actually unclear was called down by the children of the forest from one of the three surviving towers of mode Kalin the children's Tower and then flooded the neck and broke Westeros into now it's kind of hard to picture the children of the forest living inside the black stone walls of moat Kalin doesn't really seem like their Vibe right I mean we're told they live in caves in the Deep Woods and crayons in secret tree towns I don't know if what secret tree towns are like but point is yeah Blackstone Fortress doesn't really seem like their Vibe but what's more important is simply the association here the idea that the neck has something to do with the hammer of the waters none other than maester Lewin had this to say about it in a Clash of Kings although it should be noted that he's sort of trying to Spook Theon about the powers of the crown of men here and therefore maybe playing up the legend a bit more than he would at Old Town in conclave with the maesters but I'll also point out that Lewin is one of the few maesters who has earned his Valerian steel link which means he's studied sorcery and he does speak of the children of the forest as if they are real so of all the maesters Lewin is Fairly reliable as far as splitting the difference between magic and science anyway here's what he has to say to Theon Theon was about to tell him what he ought to do with his wet nurse's Fable when maester Lewin spoke up the histories say the chronog men grew close to the children of the forest in the days when the green Sears tried to bring the Hammer of the waters down upon the neck it may be that they have secret knowledge suddenly the woods seemed a deal darker than it had a moment before as if a cloud had passed before the sun it was one thing to have some full boy spouting Folly but maesters were supposed to be wise so this really is a pretty funny scene I'm I mean the skeptical maesters using old Legends to frighten the bad little children it's kind of almost like he learned a thing or two from old man at Winterfell right anyway this is the only place actually where it's suggested that the Hammer of the water has also affected the neck save for a passage in A Dance with Dragons where Theon essentially quotes maester Lewin in his inner monologue when he goes back to moat Kalin but we can assume this is the consensus wisdom of the Citadel if maester Lewin is saying it based on the legends that they've collected so guys the next video in this series is going to focus on mode Kalin I'm really it's already written I'm very excited I might record it tomorrow night in any case mode Kalin that's right weird ass place that it is we're going to talk all about it so I'm going to save the Deep dive into the swamps and crannocks for then but for now it's sufficient to Simply consider that there are legends that the Hammer of the waters was brought down not only on the arm but also on the neck this suggests that one the neck may have once upon a time not been a swamp and that it was flooded at some point in the ancient past and that too this flooding may be connected to the destruction of the arm of Dorne that is associated with a hammer of the waters it's important to realize that tsunami waves can travel a very long distance all the way across large oceans as we saw with the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of 2004. at least those of you who are a little older in the audience some of you guys may have just been born around God I'm old anyways the point is that while the neck isn't in the direct line of fire of the worst of the Hammer of the waters tsunami waves it still certainly could have been flooded with Salty Sea Water if it was already a low-lying area seawater flooding can in fact create a what's called a saltwater Marsh so maybe if there's some biologists in the uh in the audience you can tell me if the descriptions of the floor and fauna in the neck suggest that it is a saltwater Marsh or not it doesn't say that'd be interesting to note but yeah seawater flooding can create a Marshland that absolutely is a real thing so again we'll go deeper into the marshlands into the bogs of the neck and the deep and dark history of moat Kalin did I say deep did I say deep ones but I did want to point out now that the the neck could be related to the Hammer so that you can see that there is more potential evidence of cataclysmic flooding of the narrow sea even beyond the Duran God's grief myth there's also the iron Islands to deal with in a subsequent video in the series The Iron islands is on a parallel latitude to the neck and there's lots of signs of flooding and cataclysm there Legends of flooding so yeah we'll talk about that as well we're not done with the broken arm of Dorne and the Hammer of the water so let's talk about men who wear antler hats [Music] that's right men who wear antler hats they're the ones who did it in both stories actually the Hammer of the waters Legend and the Duran God's grief Legend that's right to not only do the two stories appear to describe the same flood they also describe the same headgear the same cosplay if you will at least that's what the misters say is the truth behind the green men cosplay surely they say there there are no green skinned fun like humanoids with antlers on their heads and magic powers They Ride Elks that's that's silly uh the bran believes it but the maesters do not I mean that'd just be too much fun wouldn't it whether the green men still survive on their aisle is not clear although there is the occasional account of some foolhardy young riverlord taking a boat to the aisle and catching a sight of them before winds rise up or a flock of ravens drives him away the nursery Tales claiming that they are horned and have dark green skin is a Corruption of the likely truth which is that the green men wore green garments and horned headdresses so like I said it's just really really cool shamanic cosplay all the green Sears on the Isle of faces cosplay scarf the green just like I do right okay so to be serious there probably are green men whatever they are on the Isle of faces and actually check out my secret origins of the green men Trilogy of videos for my best Green Man theories I'm going to the Isle of Langs all kinds of cool stuff in any case we don't need to figure out the truth of the green men for right now here's what's important the Durand and storm Kings have been known for cosplaying green men and here I'm not kidding in the slightest although they wear yellow and black instead of green the derned and Kings wore both antlered crowns and antlered Helms like King Robert and of course recall that house Baratheon adopted the traditions of the Durden Kings wholesale when they took over Storm's end and Houston ori's Baratheon the bastard brother of King Egg on the Conqueror married the daughter of the last earned in Storm King and then took up their sigil their colors and the tradition of the antlered crowns and Helms so all of that stuff comes from the original Durand in line of Kings centuries and centuries ago so this is actually cosplay just as people dress up like Daenerys to be imbued with some of the power of Daenerys the derned in Kings this is more serious this is religious cosplay they no doubt wore antlers on their head to convey their sort of divine Authority because the Garth the green and Green Man tradition does appear to be the oldest religion in Westeros to use that term loosely because of course this is all based on actual magic but yeah that's the point of dressing up like a stagman to convey the divine power of the green men and Garth the green himself gave rise to a line of green Kings of house Gardener so perhaps Garth the green or at least his subsequent Gardener Kings were doing something similar cosplaying green men to make themselves seem like like God men more Godlike just as the ancient durandan Kings may have done so the maesters they're not entirely crazy bringing up the idea of dressing up like like stag people it's just that in Westeros that tradition probably goes back to actual stag people so yeah and just as the reach where the gardener Kings and Garth the green Legends are from is also full of Legends of the children of the forest there's weird words to be found there storms in and it should be noted is right next to a giant forest which is full of weirwoods known as the rainwood and in fact during God's grief was said to have Ward against the children of the forest in the rainwood then his son during the second supposedly gave it back to the children so it's hard to say exactly what's going on here but it does seem like the ancient durned in Kings had some kind of relationship with the children of the forest and then there's also that little bit in the Duran God's grief Storm's end story where Duran has the children of the forest help him build Storm's end with their magic I'll talk about that in a future video when we talk about old town and stuff like that but point is some kind of relationship here with the children of the forest and the durandan Kings so the durian and Kings it may be that they didn't just dress up as stagman but rather that they intermarried with the children of the forest or the green men and became skin Changers and green Sears this is probably the answer because of course we know that the first men did that the Starks the blackwoods the crannock men other first men houses house crane so of the ancient durandin did that then yeah it would be right in the pocket for the first men so when we picture during God's grief as a green man type either in actual fact or simply by way of Cosplay his story starts to sound a lot like the Hammer of the water story in the legend of the hammer it's green Sears on the Isle of faces who call down the hammer to smash and flood the land and in the Durham tale it's an antlered King who angers the gods and thereby calls down their Divine wrath in the form of a Titanic storm and flood that might be the Hammer of the waters now small fly in the ointment uh the Hammer of the water story says that it was green seers of the children of the forest on the Isle of faces who called down the hammer not green men but the green men living on the Isle of faces are probably green Sears I mean they watch over weirwood trees and their therianthropic descriptions make them sound kind of like larger children in the Forest I mean for all we know the green men may very well be the green seers of the children of the forest referred to in this tale or maybe the green men are a cousin species to the children or maybe they're a group of men endowed with green magic all of these possibilities make a certain amount of sense and really they're not that much different therefore when we hear that the green Sears on the Isle of faces called Down The Hammer of the waters it really is pretty similar to the idea of Duran God's grief the Stag man calling down the storm God's Wrath going further I think there's actually another really tight correlation between the two legends okay so it said that the green Sears in the Hammer of the water story sacrificed either captive humans or their own young to power the magic of the hammer and then just a moment ago I told you that during God's grief was said to have Ward against the children in the rainwood forest so perhaps centuries and centuries later you know these two Tales have grown apart a little bit but they could be the same story three of massive blood sacrifice of children of the forest to call down this Hammer of the waters in other words Duran is the guy who summoned the storm and he's also remembered for killing children of the forest just as the green Sears who called down the hammer may have killed children of the forest so perhaps this is all the same story foreign so this is the part where I spell out my t-shirt joke in case you haven't picked up on it uh this is a Nine Inch Nails joke Monty Python shirt the knights who say knee but in the and Nine Inch Nails logo so Nine Inch Nails hammer Knights of knee stagmen pretty nice pretty nice Confluence there even nicer and we're gonna do just a little bit of symbolism here I get to point out one of my favorite symbolic parallels uh Robert Baratheon Robert Baratheon the first and most wrathful of the Baratheon stormlords that we meet in the story he rides around wearing an antler hat and hitting things with a big hammer a big hammer the Storm King the descendant of Dern God's grief wearing the stagman cosplay which Ned says makes him look like a horned God and of course think of Garth the green here who's a literal horned God and beating things with his hammer a hammer so heavy that other men can hardly lift it the kind of heavy huge Hammer that could batter the land now the most famous time that Robert used his hammer was in the waters of the Trident oh yes so what was the storm called Down by Duran God's grief the first Storm King the one that battered Storm's end was it the Hammer of the waters maybe maybe so just to take the symbolism a little bit further and I'll use my serious voice now uh Robert's Ascension to kingship was famously or rather infamously enabled the way was paved by the Bloodshed of children they talk about this all the time rhaegar's children obviously not children of the forest but I do believe that that is an intentional parallel Roberts the horned God is absolutely a very clear parallel to Garth the green as I just said Ned calls him a horned God uh Roberts many bastard children and his total lack of impulse control those are both Hallmarks of horny old Garth the green who gets everyone pregnant and is kind of a glutton just does whatever he wants and when I say gets everyone pregnant he's a fertility God so it literally it says he makes the land Bloom he makes the ladies okay I'm not it's kind of gross but you get the idea he's a fertility God just as Robert has many bastard children there's also the scene where Robert the very first scene we meet him he shows up to Winterfell boasting to net about all the Bountiful Delights of the flesh that come with Summer the girls the ripe fruit that's all summer King stuff you can even think of the Ghost of Christmas present from The Scrooge story that's the same idea but sticking with the summer King thing Robert eventually dies in his hunting greens from a wound that he took in the woods on a hunting trip and then when he actually dies he's cut open and laid out essentially like a sacrificed Green Man or horned God the horned God is sacrificed every year with winter resurrected in the spring hopefully you guys know the story and shout out to kernunos for for what it's worth so when Robert dresses up in his antler hat and smashes his enemies with his hammer sometimes while they're in the waters and sometimes to end a war he's actually doing a smashing impression of the green men slash green Sears on the Isle of faces who supposedly called Down The Hammer of the waters with blood sacrifice of children to end their war with the first men but of course Robert again is only wearing all that get up and calling himself the Storm King in emulation of Duren God's grief the one who called down his own storm and flood which we think may be the ham of the waters flood just witnessed from further away and obviously I'm saying that the symbolism of Robert is suggesting that they are because he's basically uniting the two stories in his character and that kind of just shows you how similar the two stories really are and if they do in fact speak of the same storm and flood it could be that the Stag man calling it down part that they both have in common also has some truth to it right some magical event that they're both describing that involved green men green sea or magic Children of the forest and obviously blood sacrifice I don't want to talk about the pack too much yet because that's going to be in a future video but I'll just also point out that the legend of the signing of the pact also takes place on the Isle of faces it involves giving the weirwood trees faces but of course we suspect that giving a hard tree of face may involve blood sacrifice again I'll sort all that out for you but there are multiple Legends potentially on the Isle of faces that involve blood sacrifice so that's probably a thing now just to give you a sneak peek of the ironborn sea Stone chair video probably the third video I think in this series I'll tell you that the Towering figure in ironborn mythology is called the gray King and he too may be an echo of the same storm summoning figure like Duran the gray King angers the storm God Duren stole the daughter of the Wind and Sea Gods you'll recall while the gray King just taunts the storm God directly it calls him names or something I don't know but something similar happens the storm God lashes down with a great Thunderbolt And of course Hammers Thunder lightning they're all tightly associated in mythology of course just think of Thor the storm god with a hammer that shoots lightning bolts thunder sounds like a hammer hitting you know you get it so that Thunderbolts may be a reference to the Hammer of the waters and then later on in the gray King story after the great King's death the storm God drowns his Palace and all his fine Treasures so there's the implication of a flood and actually more interesting is the tale of the gray King slaying Naga the first Sea Dragon supposedly who drowned whole islands in her wrath drowning islands is something that looks to have happened at the iron Islands especially at Castle Pike the crumbling stronghold of house Greyjoy where they keep that seastone chair I'll have tons to say about that uh down the line in this series but for now I just want to point out that this other possible echo of the Darren God's grief and the Hammer of the waters Legends exists over on the iron Islands there's a lot more parallels potentially um the gray King takes a mermaid to wife and Ellen I duren's wife was the daughter of the Wind and Sea Gods so she comes from the sea and you remember that the people said give her back to the Sea so Elle and I some kind of mermaid or sea goddess so that's very much a parallel to the gray King and there's also ample clues that the gray King was a green Seer sitting on a throne of weirwood with a crown of weirwood so if during God's grief is a green Seer as I suggested then these figures are all similar to the green series who called down the hammer the ironborn mythology is probably George's best Stephanie's most elaborate and detailed folklore so look forward to that video like I said probably third in the series [Music] all right so far we've figured out that there almost certainly was a catastrophic Hammer event that it was of colossal scale and that it involved tremendous flooding and even tsunamis capable of destroying Coastal castles or inundating low-lying Islands or Straits of land even large ones like the neck it does seem to be associated with green men Children of the forest the magic of the weirwoods blood magic but as disaster Hunters we're not overly concerned with puzzling out the exact magical mechanics here it's enough for now to Simply assume that we are operating within a fantasy context that magic does exist and so we're not looking for purely scientific answers just coherent ones that seem to line up with the way that George does His World building so even if we can't say exactly how the hammer was called down we're doing pretty well I mean we've connected what seemed like an isolated myth the Hammer of the waters to a couple of other ancient flooding events the first storm of Duren God's grief the flooding of the neck and potentially you know the iron Islands I'll lay out the proof for that but trust me that's that's part of it too so we've built up this strong correlation between the Hammer of the watersmith and the Durham God's grave myth right but one thing that really strikes you at this point is that the motivation of the hammer Summoner the storm Summoner character is totally different in these two stories in one story we have the children of the forest at the tail end of a genocide desperately trying to Stave off eradication and in the other we've got this really hubristic ambitious dude named Darren who's like you know what woman would be worthy of me the mermaid goddess and who then builds seven castles in a row in what seems like kind of a bad spot to build a castle just to show his defiance to the gods so they really are different in character as far as the motivation of these storm Summoner the antler hat wearing storm Summoner now here's the thing guys I don't think the children of the forest dropped the Hammer of the waters it just makes absolutely no sense on so many levels that the children the nature elves mind you thought of destroying the Earth in order to protect themselves it's entirely against their philosophy and it's it's exactly what humans would do so it sounds like humans projecting their own motivations onto the children and even the maesters point out in the world of Ice and Fire that it makes no sense for the children of the forest to break the arm of Dorne to stop the war with the first men when the first men were they had already crossed the arm of Dorne hundreds of years ago and they had already populated Westeros in much larger numbers than the children that my friends is a classic case of what we in the South I'll just point out my Virginia glasses plate back there what we call closing the barn doors after the horses have gotten out and friends if you didn't grow up near Barn let me tell you it doesn't do much good to shut the barn doors after the horses have escaped you want to do that while the horses are still in the barn so again the maesters point this out and just kind of shrug because they probably don't believe the children of the forest did or could do something like the Hammer of the waters anyway and frankly I'm not sure they could have either after all there's really no hint that I can find the green seal or skin change or magic can be used to cause colossal earthquakes I mean maybe it can we don't know the upper limits of weird magic that's true but everything we see from the green Sears it's all tied to astral projection right the ability to send your spirit out of your body and into an animal person or a tree that's what bran is doing he's skin changing the tree so it's all astral projection magic and so what are we skin changing the fall fault lines here are we making the trees wiggle their little root toes hard enough to make all of Westeros Shake I mean maybe that's not totally crazy but I don't know I'm kind of struggling to picture that but hey let's run with the idea for a minute maybe weird magic can cause earthquakes the one clue that I could sort of see is in the name of the children of the forest which is those who sing the song of Earth singers are what the children call their green Sears and bran does note that their speech sounds musical like a Babbling Brook but maybe there's more to it maybe there's a way to sing a song that makes the Earth shake kind of like the biblical story of Joshua in the walls of Jericho and Martin was raised Catholic it's a lot of biblical Illusions in The Song of Ice and Fire and Joshua in the walls of Jericho is definitely one of them they blew trumpets and horns to bring down the walls of Jericho so that seems like an inspiration for the legend of the Horn of joromen which is said to be able to to wake Giants in the earth and thus bring down the wall the big ice wall That's all really cool I think anyways but now we've gotten away from Green Sears and tree magic and we're talking about magic horns so did the green men on the Isle of faces blow a hundred magical horns to break the arm of Dorne is that a horned men blowing the horns thing uh I mean it seems like they'd have to be standing on the arm of Dorne if it's a sound vibrational thing but maybe I'm thinking too literally perhaps the song of Earth can cause earthquakes and that's that still it makes no sense to break the land bridge after it's been good and crossed and it also seems inconsistent with the beliefs of the children of the forest to damage the Earth so significantly to save their own skins Again by the time bran meets the children of bloodraven's cave they say that they're content to dwindle quietly into the night accepting of their fate and that it is men who would fight and kill and rage against it but not the children so maybe in the past they were willing to fight they do seem to have fought you know for their survival thousands of years ago so maybe it was different maybe their philosophy has changed over time uh but damaging the Earth that significantly I don't know about that speaking of harming the earth I realize I've forgot my moon Moon oh that feels better as does the removal of the Hat folks as I mentioned earlier there is a notion that the flooding of the neck was actually a second attempt by the children to cut themselves off from the first men by breaking Westeros in half with a hammer of the waters magic event but the idea is that this time it didn't work as well so they're only able to flood the neck instead of collapsing the land entirely I suppose this all makes sense if you believe that it was the children dropping hammers the Hammers of the waters to stop the first men you know because the first men were mostly south of the neck so this time at least we're closing the barn doors with the horses inside the barn if you will however if I'm correct that it makes no sense for them to have broken the arm of Dorne or to destroy the Earth in an act of self-preservation at all then it also makes no sense to suppose that the children later flooded the neck more likely this was all the same flood and that's why the Hammer of the water years is also associated with Mo Kalin a couple of other issues doesn't really make any sense for the children of the forest to sacrifice hundreds or even a thousand of their own children we know the children of the forest have very small numbers and even back then they had much smaller numbers than the humans so killing a thousand of their young is such a huge setback in the war that it would invalidate whatever gains they got from dropping the hammer uh and then as far as the idea that the children gathered at moat Kalin to drop the hammer on the neck that doesn't make much sense because they'd be standing right where they were dropping the hammer so they'd be hammering themselves and I guess maybe that is an act of self-sacrifice but none of it makes sense and that's before I really Hammer home the nail in the coffin and the nine inch nail in the coffin of the the idea of the children of the forest brought down the Hammer of the waters with my earthquaking the ring for its routine that's right it's time for earthquaking the ring forts the fun game that I've been playing here and there for the past eight years or so on forums and Reddit and wherever so it goes like this if the children of the forest could cause targeted earthquakes then why didn't they try earthquaking the ring forts of the first men where the first men tended to Cluster like easy targets if it takes the sacrifice of a hundred or even a thousand captives to call down a hammer big enough to break the arm of Dorne what about trying out smaller hammers on the ring for its first at much less expense in blood I'm imagining the the planning session with the children of the forest does it one of those little bloodthirsty [ __ ] elves stand up and say like hey guys this is all cool breaking the arm of doing and stuff but doesn't this seem like a bit Overkill destroying an entire land bridge how about we just try earthquaking the ring forts first their voices are higher pitched but you get the idea so not only would earthquaking the ring forts take down large clusters of first man Warriors it would also scare the ever-loving bejesus out of them don't you think so picture yourself as a first man you're Atop The Ring fort in your bronze armor you're having a snack some salt beef maybe some orange slices one of the Teen Moms brought in you're staring out into the Mists waiting for the wolves and Ravens and lions and dragonglass arrows to come again when a few of the creepy little wood elves March out into the open slice a couple of throats uh then your ring Fort starts shaking beneath you a giant crevice opens up in the earth and half your men fall in and then the elves casually turn and walk back into the forest or maybe they wave their arms menacingly it's the earthquakes that are intimidating here right it seems like you might find somewhere else to live if you're a first man in this scenario but we never hear about the children earthquaking any ring forts not once and even if you want to mention moat Kalin as a fortress of the first man that got destroyed by a hammer that's kind of like earthquaking a ring Fort right well except that the tale says the children are the ones in the fort calling down the hammer so it still doesn't make any sense there's no earthquaking the ring forts it's just wolves and lions and bears and Ravens and obsidian arrowheads and as the histories note the first men simply overmatched the children with their greater size and their horses and their bronze weapons and then out of nowhere they summon God's Own earthquake an earthquake we showed it on the map it's it's basically the equivalent of like several small countries falling into the sea at once it's basically unfathomable and the children of the forest did that really I don't think so what I think is that the Durham story is closer to the mark some sort of hubristic man likely a magician seeking to meddle with the Primal forces of nature and then somehow things went very wrong this is also pretty much exactly what happens in the gray King legend that we mentioned it's what happens in the Azor High Legend the Bloodstone Emperor Legend and several others that we'll discuss down the line I do think blood sacrifice of children in the forest was part of it it just wasn't other children of the forest Killing Children of the forest because again that doesn't make any sense so I do think there was green sea or magic where would magic blood sacrifice you know perhaps the weird magic was the thing that this ambitious figure was trying to control or obtain but I think there's some other big piece of the puzzle here some big piece of the puzzle some it's a big piece of moon if you know me in my channel you knew the moon meteors were going to come into this and yes it's Moon meteor time if you know the theory already congratulations and if not if you're new to the channel welcome check out the nightbringer series this is kind of what I'm known for it's five videos explains all the evidence it's a lot of fun I'll come back to this more basically throughout all of these videos the idea that there's meteors involved but I just want to introduce now if if you're new to this idea that a media or comet impact could have been the trigger for the Hammer of the waters event the earthquake and the collapse of the arm of Dorne instead of the children of the forest doing magic I think it was a meteor strike all this talk of calling things down after all implies that something came down and hard right hard enough that it was like a giant hammer on the land itself what could that even be besides a meteor or a comet impact hammers are made of iron just like meteorites are this one's got a bit of lithium in it shout out Nirvana and there's even a fictional book well-known fictional book by author Larry Niven called Lucifer's Hammer that's about a doomsday comet in addition to that meteorites were also called thunderstones by some ancient cultures in our own world so this could also be the truth behind the Thunderbolts of those angry storm gods in the Duran and gray King stories so thunderstones that's pretty cool and in A Song of Ice and Fire of course as we all know comets and meteors are called bleeding Stars right everyone calls the comet the bleeding star and the Azor High reborn prophecy also foretells of a time when quote the Stars bleed which can only be some sort of reference to a kind of meteor shower that's coming in The Winds of Winter to cause the new long nights I've been saying that for about eight years in any case we've also got this bad dude from the Far East called Bloodstone Emperor I said his name a minute ago he was said to have taken power over an ancient Kingdom called the Great Empire of the Dawn during the long night and most importantly he was said to have worshiped a black stone that fell from space a bleeding star that fell to the ground as a rock worshiped by the Bloodstone emperor guys I I think this guy was named after his magic Rock a bleeding star in the sky would be a bloody Stone on the ground so yeah the Meteor Man Emperor Bloodstone Emperor that's him and that kind of makes sense I mean it says he cast down the true Gods to worship the black stone so it really was his thing so I mentioned the Bloodstone Emperor for two reasons one it's just another story about a meteor and you guys know there's also Dawn so we know meteors they're they're in the Legends of the ancient past there's more than you think too uh but the second reason is that this is really funny this is kind of an author clue to the reader but there's only two named islands in the chain of islands that is all that remains of the broken arm of Dorne and the largest island the one that Damon Targaryen himself takes as his Royal seat in season one of House of the Dragon when he declares himself King of the narrow sea and buzzing at home if you know the answer it's called Bloodstone Island so Bloodstone Island right there in the middle of the broken arm of Dorne kind of like a big fat the meteor did it sign so what broke this here arm it was a bloodstone the bleeding star that fell like a hammer so let's go back to King Robert and his hammering of rhaegar in the waters of the Trident if I'm right that this is giving us clues about the Hammer of the waters enduring God's grief and the green men then there could be other clues about the Hammer of the waters lurking there right so think about this uh rhaegar the steel dragon and his blood red ruby stones that made up the dragon sigil on his armor were hammered into the waters very like falling meteors now of course meteors in A Song of Ice and Fire and in the real world can be symbolized as dragons in folklore and mythology so the falling dragons are like meteors and of course the rubies calling them blood red as it does in that passage implies them as bloody Stones as well as pieces of dragon so it's kind of a double whammy as far as bloodstones and dragon meteors getting hammered into the waters by Robert you get it you get it so again I'll point out Damon Targaryen claiming kingship on Bloodstone Island as that's really just a way of highlighting the connection between bloodstones and dragons and hubriscic men that seek power like during God's grief and the Bloodstone Emperor and Damon when he declared himself King of the narrow sea Damon's Dragon corrects these as even red just like rhaegar's Ruby Dragon for what it's worth so if Damon taking Bloodstone island is meant as part of the symbolism well his dragon is blood red so there you go and finally Damon also parallels the Bloodstone Emperor who is a god emperor of the great Empire of the Dawn when he gives his amethyst-eyed Queen rhaenyra the Jade Tierra of the god Empress of Lang as a gift and in case he didn't know the amethyst Empress supposedly the Bloodstone emperor or possibly sister wife and the empresses of Ling are called God empresses so it could be that they married the god Emperors of the great Empire of the Dawn since the great Empire of the Dawn included Lang in its territory that's uh kind of in the weeds but it's pretty cool parallel that involves House of the Dragon so I thought I'd mention it [Music] so the million dollar question what we've been working on for a long time was this Hammer really called down or another way of asking the question is can comets be summoned with magic in A Song of Ice and Fire it's a huge question again been talking about it for years I think the answer is yes as the legend suggests and I'll make a video about that some other time with my theories on that but whether the meteor Hammer was summoned or if it just happened to fall when it did and then legends about it arose that said people were responsible for it or children of the forest or whatever that's pretty much what I got for you today yes the arm of Dorne really was smashed by a giant hammer that fell from the heavens I think that's the most logical assessment of the evidence as I've laid out and I'll continue to provide more evidence as we go in this series so guys I'll just finish by saying again how cool it is that George has constructed a lot of his old Legends around these cataclysmic events that would have been experienced by multiple groups of people in different regions and then encoded in slightly different yet not so different Legends and folk tales that can then be coherently assembled and analyzed as if they were real Legends of floods and things from The Real World the Legends just have antler hats and weirwood trees but actually a lot of our real ruled folklore does and check out the Norse mythology of Ice and Fire playlist for the real world of Norse mythology Behind the weirwoods Green Sears and characters like bloodraven John and bran and again I'll steer you towards that secret origins of the Green Man series it's got all the best antler had artwork in it and uh cheers friends I'll see you next time with a video about who builds mote Kalin and why it was the squishers [Music] laughs

Channel: David Lightbringer

Views: 79,982

Keywords: hammer of the waters, isle of faces, moat cailin, greenseers, children of the forest, green men, arm of dorne, Lightbringer, NIghtbringer, the Long Night, red comet, great empire of the dawn, lucifer means lightbringer, lml, david, mythical astronomy, moon meteors, dawn, alt shift x, in deep geek, quinn's ideas, theory, secrets, revealed, mythology, symbolism, ASOIAF, A Song of Ice and Fire, GoT, Game of Thrones, bleeding star, red sword, comet, meteor, nasa, impact winter, dragon

Id: LUYAufRp5nI

Length: 51min 51sec (3111 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023