The Ironborn Mystery - Disaster Hunters of Ancient Westeros - A Song of Ice and Fire

who are the ironborn really I mean they're lumped in with the first men but it doesn't seem quite right does it their cultural and religious practices don't match they have advanced seafaring skill where the first amend distinctly did not and the ironborn themselves believe that they are not first men but that they came from a lost land across the sunset sea or maybe they are fish people from under the sea because that's one of their cultural beliefs too that they are in fact descended from the deep ones and lending supplement of credibility to this weird collection of ideas are two physical artifacts which present problems for the maester's official timeline of Westeros that's right we get a little timeline heresy coming just a little and of course those two artifacts that I'm talking about are the sea Stone chair and Castle Pike itself the sea Stone chairs we all know is a big hunk of oily Black Stone carved into a kind of Kraken Throne while Castle Pike is a crumbling remnant of a castle built on top of an equally crumbling Peninsula and supposedly both Kraken throne and crumbling Castle were found as is by the first ironborn to arrive on the iron Islands oh and did I say two artifacts make that three because there's also a giant petrified weirwood arc on Old Wick and that's definitely going to need some explaining so as you can see George R Martin our beloved author has created a fun mystery for us readers here with these ironborn and I'm going to try to peel this one apart for you like no one ever has so strap in yeah it's a Theon peeling flame joke and also a Theon strapped to a cross joke I'm sorry but the truth of the ironborn that I think I've discovered very dark indeed even darker than anything we find at The Dread Fort if you can believe that because we're going a full 40 fathoms down that is not dead which can Eternal lie and after strange eons even death may die [Music] hey there friends David lightbringer here thanks so much for clicking on my video and yes the ironborn are more than just weird lovecraftian Vikings who love stealing and hate farming they're also a tantalizing puzzle box and their mythology is in all seriousness probably George R Martin's most developed in World mythology as many of you will know that quote about how even death may die is from HP Lovecraft and it's pretty obviously the inspiration for Martin's ironborn Credo say it with me what is dead can never die but rises again harder and stronger oh that was that was a good job you guys the damn pet would be proud yes so now Lovecraft is nice actually no it's kind of dark and twisted but anyway consider the words also of the Great American Electro pop band Devo which is a little more up my alley pop culture wise and Devo saying that uh we are not men we Are Devo and that de-evolution is real and while this was originally a dark and cutting commentary on pop culture and where Human Society was headed Devo wrote that song before the Advent of social media isn't that fun uh it also works very well as a summation of the ironborn people of the iron Islands who almost seem devolved as humans that's right I mean for starters the ironborn seemed to worship death their God Is Dead He's a Drowned God and they're drowned priests famously drown and resuscitate their religious initiates so it's kind of like baptism only much much worse progress of any kind it seems to be the last thing that the ironborn want as we saw when Asha gray Joy's very sound and solid plan for the future of the ironborn was only rejected in favor of the sound of euron's dragon binder horn oh and also euron's hubris ambition lust for power propensity for violence and all that other stuff that the ironborn love as for what they don't love well they don't like the faith of the seven or the old gods of the north they don't like paying for things and they don't like farming of any kind it's really quite the Lark I mean yes we are people who need to eat food but no we won't grow it ourselves we're gonna steal it just a very recalcitrant worldview it's really just at odds with a natural order of things I mean sure fishing and hunting and Gathering is a perfectly acceptable alternative to farming but their Gathering is just stealing and their hunting amounts to kidnapping people to be thralls and salt wives the ironborn deride the greenlands [ __ ] greenlands and seem to prefer instead their Barren Windswept islands and poverty that's right the family's poor a Theon true though the ironborn are in fact just plain old lacking in resources from food to the tall trees they need to build more of their famous long ships to any sort of gold or mineral Wealth Beyond iron they cover for this lack with a sort of austere Warriors ethos and again by stealing but the point is that the ironborn have essentially been this way for as long as anyone can remember and they stick with it no matter how poorly it fares as a strategy these are backwards people yes they are sort of the Vikings of A Song of Ice and Fire but they're nowhere near as cultured as historical Norseman something is very off here and I think the simplest way to frame this in a sort of meta context if you will is to say that the ironborn are probably inspired just as much if not more by H.B lovecraft's writings about the Deep ones and their hybrid thralls then the historical Vikings than the historical Vikings hey there friends post production David lightbringer here four magic spoon who has once again sponsored our video thanks guys and thanks to those of you who have tried magic spoon a bunch you guys did you seem to be liking it because of course magic spoon is very tasty and by the way I'm just going to do the read myself this week no rhaegar the video is already pretty long I want to be in the commercial no I got a dude please is I want to help anyway like I was saying magic spoon terrific did you guys try combining the cocoa and the peanut butter that was good and you know it's funny how you make cereal with all natural ingredients and then it tastes good yeah who who would have thought Come On Dave the reviews of my last performance were overwhelmingly positive yeah yeah you did great it just was short on time and you always start talking about prophecy and stuff it makes it take too long I won't do that this time thanks anyway yeah so magic spoon really is sweet and delicious but with no sugar and only four to five grams of carbs per serving and 14 to 15 grams of protein per serving Come On Dave no thanks come on you need the help clearly oh all right oh I see you're already sitting down okay yes fine but you gotta just talk about magic spoon okay keto friendly high in protein gluten free grain free Magic spoon is nothing less than the complete reinvention of your childhood favorites only this cereal will fuel you for the day instead of just raising your blood sugar simply click the link below or use the QR code and get you some magic spoon cereal today and remember to save five dollars off with our promo code lightbringer hey rhaegar look at that you can stick to the talking points very nice folks did you know you can actually put together your own custom flavor box from all their wonderful magic spoon flavors including my new favorites birthday cake rhaegar have you tried the birthday cake yes I did and it is quite good but birthdays are always a little sad for me for I was born amidst the ashes and grief of Summer Hall and I always nah see this is just the kind of thing I was talking about very sad but we don't got time for that this is about the ironborn folks if you want to try this cereal check out the link below or scan the QR code on the screen or go to magicspoon.com lightbringer and don't forget the promo code lightbringer for five dollars off and by the way you friends in Canada and the UK all sides all parts of the UK can get in on the action too because magic spoon now delivers to Canada and the United Kingdom and now back to the ironborn [Music] all right it's time to play Disaster Hunters of ancient Westeros ironborn Edition and of course that just means we'll be acting as sort of pretend anthropologists and that just means that we'll be comparing the physical evidence here at the iron Islands to their oldest Legends and folklore looking for bits of the legends that might be factual observations of things that actually happened hashtag facts well especially be looking to see if we can connect anything that's happened here at the iron Islands to the Hammer of the waters Mega disaster which seems to Encompass not only the breaking of the arm of Dorne but also the flooding and earthquaking of the neck and mount Kalin and hopefully you've watched The Hammer of the waters and mode Caitlyn videos in This Disaster Hunters playlist which you can find Linked In the description below we'll also stay on the lookout for any clues about Comet or meteor impacts since that is of course what I think set this compound disaster into motion and you can find out more about that in the recent packed video as well as the nightbringer playlist all of this investigating and disaster hunting at the iron Islands will of course be wrapped up in the mystery of the origins of the ironborn people which is really the deeper question here did I say deeper did I say deep ones I did because of course in the mode Kalin video we started highlighting this pattern it's a repeated pairing of fish people and black stone and it began at Mount Kalin with the black stone there the entire thing is made out of black stone and then there's all sorts of descendants of fish people on either side of the neck right where the gills are I'm talking about the map of course Three Sisters iron Islands basically all around the midsection of Westeros so Blackstone and fish people and then of course that pattern also took us to satorios the lost city of Yin which is made entirely of oily Blackstone and the Isle of toads where we find very fishy people and that big 40-foot High toadstone Idol now that brings us to the iron islands of course where we have the oily Black Sea Stone chair paired with plenty of fishy looking people plenty of Legends of the deep ones and just in general lots of ironborn dressing up as deep ones I mean have you seen that armor very suspicious but this deep one's crack and Throne thing is far from the only mystery here at the iron Islands that's right so in the next three videos we're actually going to try to determine the following things who the ironborn are where they came from and whether there is some lost Homeland across the sunset sea why the ironborn have such Advanced seafaring skill where other first men do not who carved the sea Stone chair where the sea Stone chair even came from who built Castle Pike what happened to the land at Castle Pike were the iron Islands ever connected to Mainland Westeros what happened to the Isle of Wick what is the truth of nagas ribs why are there so many clues about a lost cycle of weirwood worship on the iron islands and yes what is the truth of these Insidious and persistent rumors of the deep ones breeding with humans so as you can see that's a lot to try to wrap your arms around which is why I've got my octopus t-shirt on uh yes so we're gonna split this into three videos make it easier to digest keep everything to about an hour a piece so today will be mostly disaster hunting the iron Islands then in the next video we'll do the gray King nogus bones and the weirwood stuff that I just mentioned and the video after that will be the mother of all deep ones theories nothing less than a complete and hopefully satisfying explanation of the deep one involvement in the world of Ice and Fire let's start with the two artifacts I mentioned at the top the sea Stone chair and Castle Pike [Music] Stone chairs mentioned in two passages in the world of Essen fire where the maesters are speculating on the origins of the ironborn and both are fascinating and anytime you can quote a guy named Sauron salt tongue you know it's going to be good and it is according to their faith the ironborn are raised apart from the common run of mankind we did not come to these holy Islands from Godless lands across the seas the priest Sauron Sultan once said we come from beneath those Seas from the watery Halls of the Drowned God who made us in his likeness and gave to us dominion over all the Waters of the Earth even among the ironborn there are some who doubt this and acknowledge the more widely accepted view of an ancient descent from the first men even though the first men unlike the later Andals were never a seafaring people certainly we cannot seriously accept the assertions of the ironborn priests who would have us believe that the iron men are closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind archmaester herrig once Advanced the interesting notion that the ancestors of the ironborn came from some unknown land west of the sunset sea citing the legend of the seastone chair the Throne of the greyjoys carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily Black Stone was said to have been found by the first men when they first came to Old WIC hereg argued that the chair was a product of the first inhabitants of the islands and only the later histories of maester's inceptions alike began to claim that they were in fact descended of the first men but this is the purest speculation and in the end herrig himself dismissed the idea and so must we yet however the ironborn arose it cannot be denied that they stand apart with Customs beliefs and ways of governance quite unlike those common elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms so a lot of that is just sort of putting the meat on the bones of what I was saying at the top about the general mystery of the ironborn origins and you do gotta love how the maesters simultaneously scoff at the notion that the ironborn might have a non-first-man origin while also admitting that they are so culturally unique and independent and who cares what the ironborn think about where they came from anyway I mean they're just a bunch of drunken Pirates singing sailor songs about squids and mermaids and [ __ ] right I mean who cares or or hear me out perhaps archmaester herrig a real ironborn who also had the benefit of an education from The Citadel all the way up to the level of arch maester was actually in a great position to form a hypothesis about all this and perhaps he was on to something perhaps the seastone chair and Castle Pike as well are the products of some kind of lost phase of civilization on the iron Islands I'll just tell you right now Sauron sultung might not be crazy either when he claimed that the ironborn were created Beneath the Sea in the image of their Drowned God or Gods perhaps because obviously they're drowned gods are the Deep ones and based on how George does his folklore and sort of fog of History we should probably expect that there will be some amount of Truth in all the ideas about the ironborn's origins that they are in some sense first men that some of them may also descend from ancient Mariners from across the sunset sea and that there is probably some fishy deep ones DNA swimming around somewhere in the ironborn bloodline or maybe everywhere so to that first quote that we just read I'll add this bit from the section of the world of Ice and Fire about the dawn age where the maesters are discussing the first men the children of the forest as the two races quote unquote of humanoids living in ancient Westeros but then add that a possibility arises for a third race to have inhabited the Seven Kingdoms in the dawn age but it is so speculative that it need only be dealt with briefly among the ironborn it is said that the first of the first men to come to the iron Isles found the famous seastone chair on Old Wick but that the Isles were uninhabited if true the nature and origins of the chairs makers are a mystery maester kirth in his collection of ironborn Legends songs the drowned men sing has suggested that the chair was left by visitors from across the sunset sea but there is no evidence for this only speculation see I told you these are just drunken sailor songs man I'm kidding of course uh these songs that the drowned men sing are a large part of the Canon of ironborn folklore and apparently these songs simply reflect a larger ironborn belief one which yet another maester has stopped upon to the truth of so as you can see there is a genuine question here as to whether there may have been some non-first men to inhabit the iron islands in the distant past potentially even a race as different from the first men as the children of the forest star and obviously here we're thinking of the deep ones or deep one hybrids but also consider the great Empire of the Dawn we don't know what all of them looked like they seem like magical people so there could be some strange humanoids coming from there too the important thing is that some ironborn believe many ironborn believe I should say that they are descended from this ancient mystery people who may have sailed here from some lost land across across the sunset sea or who may have wriggled out of the ocean onto the shore maybe a little bit of both but we'll get there we've also heard twice now of this delightful legend of the sea Stone chairs origin it was just found sitting there on the shores of old Wick by the first ironborn or maybe by the first first men to arrive there and some believe that it was left there by these hypothetical visitors from across the sea [Music] now before we go any further it's time for a little heresy not timeline heresy just historical heresy in general and I really love talking about this so check this out I want to make sure that everyone realizes that first men is not the name of a coherent tribe or ethnic group like Dothraki Andals rhoynar or valyrians but rather a descriptive term that the Andals seem to have used to mean everyone who was in Westeros when we got there we always have to keep in mind that the Andals are the authors of westerosa's written history and it's told from their point of view the Andals Center everything around their migration to Westeros so to them everyone who was already there when they arrived must have been the first men in Westeros now sometimes the name of a tribe or ethnic group can be a very simple term like first men just expressed in their native language for example royynar means something like people of the ruin which is of course a river that is sacred to them and which they call their mother but if the first men had called themselves first men they would have done so in the old tongue which isn't spoken anymore so let's say the old tongue word for first men was I don't know garthlings we'll just roll with that then the first men would refer to themselves as garthings and the Andals would have called them that as well the kings of Westeros would then be the kings of the rhoynar the Andals and the garthings wouldn't that be cool and actually some people in the fandom have been calling the planet of Ice and Fire girth since it's grrm's Earth and since George has well girth so gerthlings garthlings kind of works I myself like planetos but you know whatever so as you can see first men appears to be a descriptive term one applied by the Andals to everyone in Westeros when they got there Ergo the idea that everyone in Westeros before the Andals were all from the same ethnic group that migrated over the arm of Dorne is an assumption and likely to be false and even that migration is thought to have occurred over centuries and likely would have included different tribes or ethnicities or at least people with different cultural beliefs after all and this is why this is one of my favorite things to talk about the religious practices of ancient pre-andle Westeros point to the presence of multiple cultures so check this out some of the first men such as the ones in the reach worshiped Garth the green who's described exactly like a green man some of the people in ancient Westeros on the coastlines were shipped Wind and Sea Gods of various sorts such as the ironborn the ancient durindon and the people on the three sisters islands and actually even the Tully funeral rites which are basically Viking funeral rights speak of an ancient belief in watery halls and an undersea afterlife then of course most of the people in ancient Westeros converted to the worship of the old gods of the weird Woods at some point but in the very far north we also hear about the worship of crab Gods at storold's point which is hard home by the way we have those thins up in their Hidden Valley with their own unique traditions where they still speak the old tongue and Revere their magnar as a kind of God and we also know that some wildlings even worship the others such as craster or the people on the Frozen Shore next stop on the we are not first men Express Old Town this is a place that kind of makes me glad that Ancient Aliens doesn't talk about Westeros because old town is basically a hotbed of ancient Baron or activity and worse now if you've read the Old Town section of the world of Ice and Fire which is like five or six pages long and Incredibly fascinating and especially if you know of my great Empire of the Dawn video which is like 45 minutes long and Incredibly fascinating then you know that the few Stone Fortress at Old Town which sits beneath the Hightower as well as other evidence there essentially prove moves that dragonlords from somewhere very far away that's not valyria came to Westeros in very ancient day before the long night and before the rise of valyria these are probably the great Empire of the Dawn people and almost certainly these would be the same people as the first Danes who look like dragonlords and who say they followed a falling star to Westeros and so even by itself the Dane's story is yet another account of immigrants coming to Westeros who seem different than the rest of the first men where did they get that magic sword after all even the Lannisters have such a tail that's right House Lannister come on down because land the clever who winkled casterly Rock from the casterlies and thus became the progenitor of House Lannister is said to have come from the east in some versions of the story so just how far east we talking here guys is that Signature Golden Lannister hair never blonde always golden perhaps the same golden hair as we see in Danny's vision of the gemston-eyed rulers of the great Empire of the Dawn who like the valerians and targaryens have hair described as Platinum white silver and gold all right that's it for your Lannisters secret dragonlords from the great Empire of the Dawn theory that that's pretty much it oh yes Jamie and Cersei like incest that literally is it but the point is that we are absolutely entertaining the general idea that there were ancient Mariners who came to Westeros and thus the iron Islands from across the seas somewhere in fact it looks like we actually have a solid stretch of Southwest Westeros which was colonized by ancient Mariners who again are almost certainly the great Empire of the Dawn take a look at the map here we've got Starfall Old Town casterly rock and then the iron islands all of these places have very clear claims to descend from non-first men and all are on the coast of Southwest Westeros so if this entire stretch of Westeros is part of one big Ancient Mariner colonization then I've always thought that this would have happened for one of two reasons one the great Empire of the Dawn did sail East from a shy across the sunset sea and thus landed in the west of Westeros so basically the reverse of Alyssa farman's trip or the other scenario would be that they did did sail to Westeros the normal way past Valeria through the summer sea but before the arm of Dorne was broken and thus Starfall and Old Town would have actually been the first safe harbors that they would have come to because of course there's no safe Anchorage along the south coast of Dorne whatever the case there's far too much evidence of ancient Mariners who aren't first men coming to Westeros to dismiss out of hand so we'll definitely be looking to see if the ironborn are a part of this colonization or if their tail is perhaps more weird and unique and again I'll remind you that the great Empire of the Dawn was a huge multi-ethnic Empire and therefore not everyone sailing to Westeros from that part of the world will look the same or have the same magic and finally when we consider the question of who was in ancient Westeros and how many groups of people got lumped into the term first men we also have to consider the presence of other old races of humanoids in Westeros the Deep ones the children of the forest the Giants the green men and the others there is of course very strong evidence that humans have interbred with all of these that's why it's quite the party in ancient Westeros and that may account for cultural differences between different groups of people the Deep ones are the primary lurkers in the shadows of ironborn history but again ancient Westeros was a wild continent where the children and the Giants were once found everywhere and there's a lot of evidence that the green men had a large influence on the ancient human inhabitants of Westeros as well with the legends of Garth the green and his descendants flat out claiming that many or even most of the first men in the South descend in part from green men because again gartha green is described exactly like a green man and is said to be the father of all the great houses down in the reach [Music] so with all that said let's think again about this creepy story of the seastone chair being found on the shores of old Wick by the first people to arrive there I'm going to get a little more comfortable get a little more going full squid here talk about the sea Stone chairs get a little warm here in the Sacramento Studio that's right I'm expecting lots of whoo take it off comments in the comments don't let me down it's interesting to note that the story implies that the sea Stone chair was transported from old Wick over to Pike and then up to the great keep of Castle Pike which would have been tricky the great keep isn't the one furthest out which is only connected by that terrible swing rope bridge but rather the closest island to the main island of Pike which is connected by a stone bridge but still I'm sure it wasn't fun to drag it up there nor to sail it from one Island to the other I researched a stone about that size it's it probably weighs like a couple of tons it's not it's not light it's it's heavy it's a big rock so for this reason I tend to think that this part of the legend is probably true the act of moving the oily Kraken Throne from old Wick to Pike and then over the bridge to the great keep would have indeed been memorable and figures to have become part of the story so it almost certainly was found on the shores of old Wick by the Sea and that's almost certainly why it's called the sea Stone chair and why the oldest ideas about it are that it came from the sea or that it is of the sea that and the fact that it's carved into the shape of a kraken which lives in the sea so yeah there's that now it also makes sense that it might have been found on the shoreline by the ocean for reasons of religion before it was used as a throne was likely a stone Idol just like the oily Black Stone toad Idol on the Isle of toads and it likely would have been used for religious rights conducted very close to the sea or in the sea just as Aaron damp hair conducts his religious rights by the sea or in the sea and when I say religious rights by the Sea involving the sea Stone chair yes I do mean some sort of ritualized sacrifice or even ritualized copulation with the squishers we'll get there don't worry and yes carving a throne out of a squid Idol and then parking your Royal Greyjoy ass on it might not have been the brightest idea but again the ironborn aren't exactly looking for bright ideas watering plants is too much for them so yeah all right the big question where did this Stone crack an idol come from there is no other oily Black Stone anywhere on the iron Islands or even anywhere in Westeros that we know of save for the possibility that mode kalin's black Basalt is actually oily Black Stone and check out the mode Kalin video for that discussion but the point is no other Orly Black Stone on the iron Islands means that this is not a piece of local bedrock and thus we can infer that the Seas don't share was brought to the iron Islands probably by sea anyone who's ever lived on an island can tell you you do have to have a lot of stuff brought there that's just kind of how it is oh just ordered this lovely sea Stone chair from Bali it's a bit smaller than it looks in the picture so it was definitely brought to the iron Islands but where did it come from well a shy is suspect number one being the largest repository of oily Blackstone and also since these ancient Mariners are very likely from the great Empire of the Dawn Whom I believe built a shy and at the very least were right next to a shy and probably associated with it we also find a lot of Orly Blackstone and sothorios where the entire Fortress city is built from cyclopian megaliths of oily Stone and we also find it on toad island of the bacillus Skiles off the coast of satorios where they have that 40-foot High carved oily Black Stone toed Idol and I'd like to give a special shout out to Martin H Mathis for this awesome toad Idol artwork without which it would basically be impossible to talk about gotta love our fandom artists and support them too because they're under attack by squishers AI squishers anyway the bottom line is that a shy in the general area of sethorios and maybe moat Kalin are essentially the only known candidates to have been the place of origin of the sea Stone chair again besides Under the Sea which we'll talk about separately so you can kind of see what we're working with here this Kraken stone is not from the iron islands and it did not come from any place nice someone very strange was definitely here before the most recent cycle of human inhabitation which is regarded as ironborn history and they probably come from across the sea or under the sea or both great ways Tim and I actually pursued these ideas a little further in a recent live stream called origin of a shy and Lang so check that out but before we go any further hunting oily Stone in a shy and Yin today let's go ahead and stick with the iron islands and talk about castle Pike [Music] all right Castle Pike this one is every bit as perplexing as the sea Stone chair mystery if not more if you can believe that and Pike also turns out to be George R.R Martin's other favorite castle besides Winterfell that's right yeah he said in an interview with Robin Hobb in 2014 that he was fond of quote the idea of a castle that's on these sea stacks that you know is very inaccessible and linked only by these Bridges and so forth it would be a miserable place to live it would be cold and damp and wet but it explains a lot about the personality of the ironborn so like I said they're covering for a general lack and totally crappy weather with an austere Warriors ethos and that's kind of their thing now the maesters in the world of Ice and Fire tell us that Pike is neither the largest or the grandest castle on the iron Islands but it may well be the oldest and it is from there that the Lords of house Greyjoy rule the ironborn it has long been their contention that the Isle of Pike takes its name from The Castle the small folk of the islands insists the opposite is true Pike is so ancient that no one can say with certainty when it was built nor the name of the Lord who built it like the sea Stone chair its Origins are lost in mystery well hot damn it's a castle so old no one knows who built it just kind of thing we like around here now interestingly Castle Pike features curved walls and round Towers which are engineering Feats that the first men were apparently not capable of nor even the early Andals so say the maesters so unless the maesters are wrong about that the implication is that the first men did not build castle Pike and that's certainly my opinion at least not the first men we know of the Maestro say Pike is so old no one knows who built it and indeed it is pretty clear that this Castle was first built before the land collapsed here so if this land collapse was tied to the Hammer of the waters then that could put the date of the construction of Pike in the very distant past indeed definitely before the long night and basically into the remotest earliest days of human inhabitation in Westeros and maybe even before if the squishers built it which yeah again in the mode Kalin investigation I came away pretty convinced that it was built either by the Deep ones or perhaps by their hybrid thralls under deep one supervision so this does have to be considered as a potential theory of origin for Castle Pike as well lovecraft's deep ones do build stone cities as do their hybrid descendants so it's very likely that Martin's deep ones whom he borrowed from Lovecraft basically whole cloth do as well all right here's another tasty passage from the world of Ice and Fire about castle Pike once centuries ago Pike was as other castles built upon solid Stone on a cliff overlooking the sea with a wall and keeps and Towers but the cliffs had rested upon were not as solid as they seemed and beneath the endless pounding of the Waves they began to crumble walls fell the ground gave way outer buildings were lost what remains of Pike today is a complex of towers and keeps scattered across half a dozen islets and sea stacks above the booming waves a section of curtain wall with a great Gatehouse and defensive Towers stretches across the Headland the only access to the castle and is All That Remains of the original Fortress a stone bridge from the Headland leads to the first and largest islets and the great keep of Pike so it's interesting to know that the maesters claim here that the great keep is the only part of the original Castle to survive because when Theon comes home to Pike in a Clash of Kings he thinks to himself that it is the round sea Tower which is on the outermost of the islets the one connected by the horrible rope bridge that Balin Falls from that is in fact the oldest part of the castle but here's what I'm asserting none of this Castle was really built after the partial collapse of this jet of land that would be both nearly impossible engineering wise and completely pointless I mean imagine all the work it would take to build a tower on top of a crumbling seamont and why would you think the seamont pillar would even last very long I mean each brick that you set down on top of the thing you'd be worried about it you'd be looking for the wobble yeah I mean why even put a tower there why not build a castle on the main island where the Half Moon shaped curtain wall is I would assert that that's what they did whoever they are they built the castle on solid land and then some of the land collapsed leaving a few towers and keep standing on the remaining sea months which were later connected by Bridges so as to become usable again the surviving towers and keeps might have been repaired a bit but I doubt anywhere completely rebuilt or any new towers built especially not to the round ones like the sea Tower if there were visitors or whomever that came to the iron islands and left the sea Stone chair then perhaps it is they who had the skill to Fashion Pike's round towers and they who left the ruins of Pike as their legacy with the ironborn if you will later finding the castle and repairing and building the bridges and probably dragging the squid Idol up to the mysterious ancient castle carving a seat in to it and think boom I run this [ __ ] down I'm the Lord reproof Pike let's go steal some food cause farming sucks who's with me oh sorry let me just calm down for a second uh being the Lord Reaper of Pike is exhilarating you should try it some time actually not you'll get arrested ah now I'm picturing the Monty Python and the Holy Grail ending where the British police are arresting King Arthur only it's Balin Greyjoy but you know what's also thrilling and exciting new theories and here I actually have a little Theory within a theory for you considering the possibility that the iron Islands were once connected to Mainland Westeros [Music] all right so here's an interesting question to pose just how much land fell into the sea here at Castle Pike if this was part of the Hammer of the water's disaster then it could have been a lot of land perhaps even enough to have once joined the iron Islands to Westeros Pike island is the closest of the iron Islands to Westeros well it's tied with Harla anyway but even better Castle Pike is located on the side of Pike Island closest to Mainland Westeros with the mainland being only two days sail from Pike that's kind of a curious coincidence right the most obviously destroyed part of the iron Islands just happens to crumble away into bits running in the direction of Westeros I should also point out that Pike isn't exactly just one big island and then a couple of crumbling seamants with Towers the first three sections of the castle the great keep the bloody keep and the kitchen keep are actually on what are described as islands with the remaining Towers being on on the smaller eyelets or sea months now I'm not sure what the size cut off between Island and islet is but you get the idea the land sort of gradually breaks up in this direction so we have to ask was there really so much gradual sea erosion here as to create three separate Islands quote unquote apart from the main island of Pike or are we perhaps looking at the remains of a broken Isthmus I said it like a smaller version of the broken arm of Dorne which once connected essos and Westeros perhaps that's how the very first first men got here and perhaps they were later stranded out here for the Hammer of the waters fell on Westeros only to eventually fall into the influence of the deep ones or perhaps the ancient Mariners and eventually emerge as the ironborn we know today so for starters think about this weird little mystery that George wrote about whether Pike was first the name of the castle or the island I mean why is that even a question wouldn't it be Bob obvious to assume the castle would be named after the island unless unless the castle was built before the island was an island aha yes if the land was once joined to Westeros here then the castle may have been built and named Pike at this time then after the land bridge broke the newly created Island would need a name and so perhaps it took its name from Castle Pike which may have been all that survived of the previous civilization I can't really think of any other way for that mystery to even make sense as having been written in there except for as a clue that Pike the castle was built before the island was an island so yeah it's very satisfying but let's get into the granular pieces of this potential Theory so Pike's curtain wall which the maesters say is definitely original is built facing the rest of the iron Islands almost as if Pike were a fortress built to guard the bottleneck at the far end of our hypothetical land bridge against incursion from the rest of the land that is now the iron Island if that were so then Pike would have functioned a lot like moat Caitlyn does sitting astride a continent connecting piece of land and sort of regulating the flow across it or stopping the flow and that's a pretty interesting potential parallel now Perhaps Perhaps obviously Pike's curtain wall once made a huge circle around the original castle and the rest has just fallen into the sea but perhaps Pike's curtain wall was specifically built across the narrowest point of the peninsula to specifically Ward against people from further west and by people we should again be thinking about either foreign peoples of this ancient seafaring culture or inhuman squisher Abominations one detail that really jumped out to me when I was rereading theon's first chapter at the iron islands is that Pike has no safe Anchorage with ships such as the one carrying Theon home having to land on the opposite side of the island by the castle of house Botley shout out to Tris Botley hang in there champ she'll say yes it's one of these I actually know maybe go bother someone else anyway now it would have been strange for the original Builders of Pike to choose a location on an island for their castle that has no Safe Harbor more than strange really it's actually something no seafaring people building on an island would ever have done so perhaps this all fits with the idea that Pike was built when this was a peninsula and not an island either the builders were not seafaring people who didn't need a safe harbor which implies Pike could have been reached by first men walking from Westeros or there did used to be a safe harbor here but it was on the side of the land that fell into the sea a safe harbor requires a decent amount of land you see as you essentially need some sort of protected Bay or Cove and the only place that that could have existed near the castle is on the side where the land has gone missing that would imply that even more land than appears has disappeared which is precisely the point this hypothetical layout also fits with the idea that the curtain wall is meant to Ward against foes from further west with whatever Harbor Castle Pike used to have having been safely located behind its curtain wall again on the side of the castle that fell into the sea essentially the Builders of Pike might have been Walling off this Harbor at the narrowest point of the Isthmus past the harbor all right now here's where this Theory really gets going so at the place where this hypothetical Peninsula would have joined to Westeros we do find a castle and it's a very old castle called the Bain Fort which dates all the way back to the age of Heroes the Bain Fort that's a name that suggests the purpose of this Fortress may have originally had something to do with guarding against ancient ironborn or deep ones or whomever just as Castle Pike may have if the iron Islands once connected to Westeros this fort was built to be the bane of somebody right most you think you know death you followers of the drowned God I was born from Death you see well we can say for sure is that if the island of Pike I'll give you a little more time to recover sorry if the island of Pike once connected to the mainland then the Bain Fort would have been a fortress built in a strategic location that could potentially control traffic in either direction just as would be true for Pike and just as is true for mode kala now and we can also say that it's just simply noteworthy to find a very old and significant castle at either end of where this land bridge would have been interestingly the kings of the Bain Fort were called the hooded Kings and the last one who still lived during the quote-unquote Age of Heroes mind you was a supposed Necromancer named Morgan Bain fault even death cannot resist me for I became its Master doubt in that bit this Morgan battenford The Necromancer was even said to have gone to battle with his thralls so gosh I mean this guy really does sound like an ironborn well he sounds like Bane apparently but he does sound like an ironborn right with the hooded King idea being very similar to the idea of a lord Reaper of Pike and of course think of the hooded Grim Reaper and then with him bleeding thralls into battle now it must be said that the ancient first men also practiced the custom of thraldum and this is in my opinion rightly held up as evidence that the ironborn are in some part descended from first men however first man thraldum is not often mentioned but is here with Morgan bainfort the hooded Necromancer King and he's even going to battle with his thralls which is written down as noteworthy so we can assume that's somewhat unique the ironborn also have a famous Necromancer in their folklore as well a dude called Dagon drum The Necromancer and house drums sigil and basically their entire identity comes from this Dagon drum The Necromancer so is a very important fellow going further the name Morgan is in Morgan bainfort is Welsh and means circling C or white sea dweller white is in White Caps presumably so yeah a hooded sea dweller Necromancer King that goes to battle with thralls really does sound like an ancient ironborn doesn't he or perhaps he's from whatever culture existed here before the ironborn were cut off from Westeros and became who they are today this might explain how the first men custom of thraldum made it to the iron islands and then sort of became entrenched there even while it diminished in Mainland Westeros and eventually died out there does at the very least seem to be similar cultural ideas said Pike and the Bain Fort so perhaps they were once connected by a land passage and share some very ancient history basically picture a couple of hooded Reaper Kings harvesting squishers I mean that's that's what we got now I will just quickly say that when I first came up with this theory of the iron Islands being connected to Mainland Westeros I thought it would be merely something just kind of worth mentioning as an aside but then I found all this Bane Ford stuff and it seemed more plausible and then as I was revising the script actually it finally clicked that the island of Pike could only have taken its name from the castle if the castle had been built before the island was cut off for Mainland Westeros and needed its own name this also very nicely explains how first men may have come to be stranded on the islands and then cut off and set free to evolve separately under the watchful eye of the deep ones so although I'm a little more confident in the simpler idea that whatever land collapse happened here was connected to the Hammer of the waters disaster for reasons you're about to see in the next section it does seem like George wants us to think that the peninsula Castle Pike was built on did once join Mainland where after all that's an awful lot of detail for him to give us about how Spain for it in the age of Heroes when they barely even come up in the main story at all and only as an aside kind of seems like these details might just be clues about the ironborn mystery which is very important and the only mystery they could be giving us clues about is the idea that the iron Islands were once joined to Mainland Westeros foreign so far and what does this mean well there does seem to have been some very old forgotten phase of existence here or maybe even more than one the sea Stone chairs definitely from somewhere else and therefore it may be the people from very far away sailed here a very very long time ago this is also the most obvious explanation for The ironborn's Unique seafaring skill not found elsewhere amongst the first men that it was brought here by a seafaring people who came from very far away all of this makes it more plausible that castle Pike was also built in the very ancient past long before ironborn history quote-unquote began and this tracks with its anachronistic round Tower design which is supposedly beyond the engineering capabilities of the early first men and it also tracks with the idea that castle Pike was built before some ancient land collapse that no one remembers save for some Legends and drunken sailor songs which sound like they're talking nothing about cataclysms let's go ahead and take a look at those ironborn Legends and songs which may be describing cataclysms and to see if any of it lines up with what we know about the Hammer of the waters he says in a voice clearly suggesting that it will there's actually quite a lot to work with here not only multiple legends about floods but also potential sign of a meteor strike or volcanic eruption which could have been the trigger for flooding and land collapse that's right a volcano well maybe have a look at old Wick and great Wick great Wick is a crescent-shaped island and wraps around old Wick which is a smaller roundish Island this could be a match for a Caldera Island configuration left over from some huge ancient volcanic eruption the simple fact that both islands are called WIC implies that they were once part of the same island so it would make sense if there was once one larger island of WIC which was a volcanic island so the primary ironborn flood myth is the tale of Naga the first Sea Dragon the mightiest ever to rise from the waves she fed on Krakens in leviathans and drowned whole eye Islands in her wrath yet the gray King had slain her and turned her bones to Stone which are nogus ribs which are on the island of old Wick so something huge and fiery Rose from the waves and drowned whole islands this certainly could be a mythical account of a volcanic eruption of old Wick which not only destroyed that island but much of the land in the area if it caused or was paired with significant shaking of the ground take note that the small sea between great Wick and old Wick is called naga's cradle that would make a lot of sense of course if the nagamath is describing the eruption of the combined Wick Island that might have once existed even the name Wick could be a clue think about a candle wick or perhaps the wick on a stick of dynamite this is the old Wick the one that blew a long time ago perhaps such an eruption created tidal waves and shook the ground a bit resulting in the land collapse said Castle Pike or perhaps it's the other way around and it was the earthquakes associated with the hammer of the waters that collapsed the land at Pike and then triggered the volcanic eruption of Wick either way earthquakes and volcanoes can occur together and in fact every volcanic eruption measures on the Richter Scale as at least a small earthquake now as we saw in the mode Caitlyn video the evidence points to there having been an earthquake there and if there's a fault line somewhere beneath the neck then it must surely be connected to any volcanism at the iron Islands which is very close and on a parallel latitude Ergo if Wick is a volcano it may well have been set off by a significant earthquake of this fault line under the neck which of course would have been the quaking connected to the Hammer of the waters the word wick itself means town or settlement in Old English so old Wick actually has the same name as Old Town yeah it's interesting might have been settled by the same people too and if the combined Island that once may have existed here was just called WIC then it was basically just called town or settlement as in the only one the implication then is that WIC aka Town was the first settlement established by the ancient Mariners in this area after all this would not have been the first settlement made by first men who either walked here over a formerly existent land bridge or who miraculously you know drifted here on fishing boats or wherever since Wick is the furthest west of the main iron island chain so yeah it's not the first one the first men would have come to no matter how they came to the islands however it may have or would have been the first island reached by people sailing here from the West uh-huh so it could be that these ancient Mariners first settled on WIC but were wiped out or mostly wiped out by the disaster that blew this island apart so yeah that disaster could have been a volcano or on the other hand the shape of old and great Wick could also resemble a meteor crater that's right because meteor impacts do sometimes leave an outer crater ring and then an inner protrusion that essentially is the molten rock splashback from the impact when the crater fills in with water you get a lake with an island in the middle and this is why some people believe that the God's eye shout out to an American thinks very cool YouTube channel that the God's eye is a crater lake and certainly I think it could be and therefore the combined old Wick great Wick Island pairing could be a sort of crater Island pair if it isn't a Caldera Island if the Crescent of great Wick is the outer ring of this meteor crater then obviously one of the long night meteors would have hit right here right on the island of Wick or it could be that the iron Islands again were larger or even a peninsula that was joined to Westeros at this time with a meteor impact anywhere near here just kind of shattering the peninsula setting off earthquakes and collapsing things and triggering that volcano a meteor-induced land collapse is of course exactly what I think happened to the arm of Dorne so it could be a similar story just on a smaller scale here at the iron Islands meteor impacts and especially Comet impacts often do come in groups since the larger rocks tend to break up a bit as they Scorch their way through Earth's atmosphere it's very stressful scorching through the atmosphere so it's very easy to imagine multiple locations in Westeros having been bombarded I've always put the iron Islands as the next most likely Impact Zone after the arm of Dorne and a shy and of course check out my stream with great ways Tim origins of a shy where we talk about that so whether great and old Wick are shaped by a meteor or a volcano I'm guessing Martin wants us to think that it's one or the other I mean it's disaster shaped and some sort of Island drowning Sea Dragon was born here so when we ask ourselves whether the iron Islands could have been affected by the Hammer of the waters event it does seem like that could be or probably was the case and we can upgrade that to almost certainly if there was a meteor strike here now turning back to the mythology I have to tell you that just as a sea dragon myth could describe a volcanic eruption of the island and again it that fits very well it could also work nearly equally well as the description of a meteor impact in or near the sea which causes tidal wave flooding we myth heads here at the David lightbringer Channel know well and that's if you're new to the channel myth head with a y or myth we like mythology um we know well that comets and meteors can be described as flying dragons in folklore and that's both in real world folklore and in A Song of Ice and Fire where the red comet is called the Dragon's Tale and where old Nan says of course that the comet means dragons boy so if flying comets and media years can be dragons then a sea dragon that drowns Islands could simply be a falling Dragon rock that both shattered islands and created tsunamis that inundated low-lying islands and areas of land so perhaps that's a description of a star that's fallen from or been slain from the sky so here we have to again think of the Danes who remember coming to Westeros from somewhere else by following the track of a falling star which importantly they then possessed just as the gray King was remembered as possessing the fire of the Sea Dragon whom he slew could this all be a part of the same story of ancient Mariners who came to Westeros around the time that stars fell from the sky and who knew how to possess their magic did they all listen to Starman by David Bowie over and over again on repeat great song great song after all the Bloodstone Emperor who was the last ruler of the great Empire the dawn also possessed a magic Space Rock and one of the main premises of that entire great Empire of the Dawn theory is that the Empire came to Westeros and built that fused Stone fortress on Battle isle at Old Town and that eventually they invaded Westeros from there perhaps that was the Bloodstone Emperor himself so once again we see all the same elements here a falling star a powerful Sorcerer And people from a shy or wherever sailing to Southern Westeros did the great Empire of the Dawn come to Westeros hunting meteors where the meteors the conduits of their ancient lovecraftian gods that they were attempting to reconnect with who knows who knows it could simply be that their presence in Westeros just coincides with the long night when the meteors fell and that they simply knew how to use their magic or how to make weapons out of them either way the ancient ironborn legends make them seem like they are a part of this phenomenon if the Island drowning sea dragon is a meteor impact story then we have the gray King who seems very much like an ancient mariner being thought of as having slain this dragon and then somehow having possessed its fire which means it's magic So speaking of forging magic weapons from meteorites check out this passage from the world of Ice and Fire It's both a good summary of the early ironborn first man dynamic as well as a possible clue about magic meteor weapons the lands the rivers plundered were densely wooded but thinly peopled in those days then as now the ironborn were loathed to go too far from the salt Waters that sustained them but they ruled the sunset Sea from bare island in the Frozen Shore down to the arbor the feeble fishing boats and trading cogs of the first men which seldom ventured out of sight of land were no match for the Swift long ships of the Iron Men with their great sails and banks of ores and when battle was joined upon the shores Mighty Kings and famous Warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe in such numbers that the men of the greenlands told each other that the iron men were demons risen from some watery hell protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very Souls of those they slew so the safe traditional cultural Anthropologist conclusion here is that these black weapons that so terrorized the first men were in fact just primitive iron weapons not the sort of advanced steel that the Andals brought but the more primitive black Iron that preceded the development of Steel working in our own world the iron islands are in fact rich in iron ore so it figures that they'd work in that instead of bronze and for you ancient weapons history Buffs out there uh yes primitive iron weapons did overlap with bronze weapons during the Bronze Age because steel doesn't just come from nowhere is not a man waiting in the sky of course this is not the real world this is a fantasy world so we have to entertain the Wilder explanations here and when I hear about Soul drinking black weapons I can't help but think of Azor High's lightbringer which did drink nissenissa's Soul according to Legend that's right it says her blood and her soul and her strengthened her courage all went into the steel so that's the soul drinking part covered and imagining lightbringer as a black steel weapon a prototype of Valyrian steel perhaps is actually very easy since Valeria seems to have descended from the great Empire of the Dawn and since the Valerian process of forging magic swords with dragon fire and blood magic seems very much like an attempt to reproduce the exact recipe that made lightbringer and also and perhaps even more so because lightbringer was directly inspired by stormbringer of Michael morcox Elric of melnibene stories and storm bringer which even more specifically and clearly drinks and absorbs The Souls of everyone that it kills is a black dragon sword that lights up with red runes and black fire and obviously this is also the inspiration for the name of blackfyre the black steel ancestral sword of House Targaryen oh and uh shout out to J.R.R tolkien's black metal meteor swords anguirrell and anglical whose names essentially mean something like iron of the Flaming star so yeah lightbringer was a soul-drinking weapon and quite possibly a black sword so if these ancient Mariners were from the great Empire of the Dawn then these Tales of magic weapons Soul drinking black metal weapons or protective sorceries such as the valerians woven to their armor may actually have some truth to them and that brings us to the legend of the most feared of all the ancient ironborn reavers Balin blackskin most infamous of all was bailin in blackskin who fought with an ax in his left hand and a hammer in his right no weapon made of man could harm him it was said swords glanced off him and left no Mark and axes shattered against his skin so again perhaps this was just the first suit of iron armor given legendary status over time the first people wearing any kind of iron plate armor would seem just almost like demons like unkillable demon like it makes sense right however again this is a fantasy novel and armor or clothing Laden with protective spells is a thing we've seen euron he has black Valerian steel armor which is Graven with sorceress runes and glyphs and of course there are the royces a first men house from the veil who you know uses protective runes on their bronze armor in other words we may have both magical black weapons and magical black armor somewhere in very ancient ironborn history and we also have a plausible Theory to explain how they may have acquired such Advanced magical technology the great Empire of the Dawn these ancient Mariners and yes euron acting like a wannabe Bloodstone Emperor and sailing to the iron Islands from a shy on a very unique ship may very well be a symbolic reenactment of the gray King sailing to Westeros from the great Empire of the Dawn and maybe a shy but we'll tackle that in the gray King video and also in that gray waste origins of a shy video [Music] okay so like I said there's one more possible ironborn meteor myth besides slaying the Sea Dragon Naga and possessing her fire the gray King is also remembered as having taunted the storm God who of course is seen as a kind of Arch Enemy of the Drowned God and the antagonist of the ironborn with the storm God then having lashed out at the gray king with a mighty Thunderbolt now as many of you will know thunder and lightning are of course closely Linked In folklore such as with Thor's lightning spitting hammer mjolnir and we see that mimicked in A Song of Ice and Fire with Robert Baratheon the stormlord wielding a giant Warhammer thus the legend of this Mighty ThunderBolt from the ironborn storm God could be expressing the same idea as a hammer of the waters that was slammed down onto the Earth by during God's griefs aggrieved Wind and Sea Gods after all King Robert Baratheon the stormlord did come to the iron islands and absolutely Hammer the [ __ ] out of them with his Warhammer and to top it off thoros of Mir was even the first one through the breached wall at Castle Pike with his flaming sword being said to have set ironborn of fire left and right storm Hammers and flaming swords beating down the iron Islands into submission this does sound like symbolism doesn't it even flaming Iron Man or symbolism as those are just flaming iron meteorites with hands and faces hey there's another t-shirt idea now just as I believe the true Hammer of the waters was a falling meteor that mythical storm Gods Thunderbolt could be another mythical remembering of a meteor strike certainly since meteorites were often and understandably called thunderstones by various ancient cultures in our own world and just as with the sea dragon legend the gray King again possesses the fire of a thing from the heavens because the storm God's Thunderbolt sets a tree Ablaze which is then described as the gray King quote bringing fire to the Earth like Prometheus again we really have to wonder if the implication here is that the gray King owned magic meteorites perhaps that's even what the sea Stone chair is a giant oily black Space Rock carved into a kraken Idol did the ancient ironborn just carve their black weapons right off of the Kraken Stone probably not but it's kind of a funny mental image [Music] all right so to wrap up this first ironborn video we're gonna dabble in just a little bit of the old symbolic meta textural reading that basically just means that when Martin writes a scene at Castle Pike we might expect to find symbolism Clues hidden in the narrative about the mysteries of Castle Pike as well as the mystery of the seastone chair that it houses and the Mystery of the ironborn squid kings that lived there in the end all of this ancient folklore and World building that we're exploring is really just serving to complement and frame the main story of course and Martin excels in weaving these two things together to create a richer story a great example of this is the passage that we want to look at it's that one in a Clash of Kings where Theon first sees Castle Pike this is before Theon got tricked by his sister who came on to him and then verbally abused by his father yes everything was looking up at this moment and speaking of looking up Theon is looking up at the red comet which hangs in the air above the the castle while this entire scene plays out and then we seem to get a bunch of clues about the ancient disaster that shaped the island of Pike that's right with that big red sword or Dragon's Tail or burning brand or whatever you want to call it bright in the sky over Pike we then read about how the point of land on which the greyjoys had raised their Fortress at once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered thousands of years passed so the land broke here and plunged into the sea just how much land did you say it was hammered and what's all this about a giant sword so you kind of see what I mean about the overall picture being painted here with the language it's well established that falling meteors and comets can be mythicized not only as dragons but of course as swords Gendry and Arya see the red comet as a sword specifically in the story so as the author paints a picture of a sword which quote had once thrust into the bowels of the ocean we can't help but think of a giant meteor sword plunging into the bowels of the ocean perhaps right here at or near Castle plank perhaps this is what shattered and drowned the land the islanded drowning action of the sea dragon with the sea dragon legend simply being a mythicized description of this falling meteor sword so yeah when we're reading all this stuff and looking at the red comet hanging right over the castle it almost looks like the topic word at the top of a whiteboard presentation now the name Castle Pike sort of complements these ideas too when you think about it because a pike can either be a word for a fish or a stabbing weapon just like a falling meteor that is both a sea dragon which is a fish and a sword which is a stabbing weapon Pike's Peninsula once thrust into the bowels of the sea like a sword and it's named after a fish meanwhile the meteor that may have struck nearby was like a sword and a fishy sea dragon and this is where I bring up star Pike because that's painting the same word picture as a sea dragon which is a falling star that landed like an iron weapon at Pike a star Pike or a star sword now I know this starts to sound like Dr Seuss sometimes but one I love Dr Seuss and two George is a writer and writers like to play games with words star Pike and house Peak much like the Bane Fort don't really figure too much into the main story however the word star Pike tells us so much about the mysteries of Castle Pike while we're talking about star Pike I should also mention that the gray King was said to have had a table carved in the shape of a huge starfish so that's yet another clue that the sea dragon fish was a falling star and yet another clue that the gray King may have possessed the magic or power of such a falling star gone all the glory gone damp hair bemoans but don't worry damp hair that bleeding star is coming back around again in the Winds of Winter in glorious fashion Huron needs it to become a god of the Charnel pits and Graves after all and won't that be nice now Aaron damp hair actually does see the comet in a Clash of Kings and says to Theon a birding brand it is such as our people carried of old it is the flame the Drowned God brought from the sea and it proclaims a rising tide it is time to hoist our sails and go forth into the world with fire and sword as he did so once again we see the author drawing that repeated link between the red comet and a fiery sword but that's old news lightbringer red comets fiery swords it's interesting for today to hear the damp hair talk about drowned Gods coming out of the Sea of those squishers did they carry the fire or magic of a comet out of the sea somehow well again we don't know what oily black stone is or how it's created and it absolutely could be meteoroc meteorite or technically or Rock transformed by an evil lovecraftian magic meteor and this does seem to be what happened at a shy in my opinion a City built of oily Black Stone and shouted in some kind of Perpetual cloud of evil darkness and it's definitely definitely possible that the seastone chair was literally dragged out of the sea and onto the Shore by the goddamn deep ones for the ancient ironborn to use so did the drowned deep one gods of the ancient ironborn literally carry a meteorite carved into the shape of a kraken out of the sea and was this Idol some sort of key to ancient magic rituals there's only one way to find out and that's by watching the next two ironborn videos you know I was going to say that but hey we're off to a great start today and the main takeaway from this video here is that the iron Islands do seem to be wrapped up in this great Empire of the Dawn Ancient Mariner mystery that there is Major sign of disaster here which appears to be connected to the Hammer of the waters event and that there are seemingly lost cycles of existence here on the iron Islands first men do seem to have become stranded on the islands perhaps having crossed over this hypothetical broken land bridge between Pike and the Bain Fort but they don't seem to be the only people involved in becoming the ironborn that we know today in the next video we'll get deeper into this Ancient Mariner question and the gray Kings weirwood Arc and we'll uncover that lost cycle of weird worship that I mentioned that seems to have occurred there in the ancient past then after that I'll have my deep ones video for you and in that one we'll tie all of this together and build a real timeline of ancient ironborn history cheers for now thanks for watching Thanks for liking and commenting and thanks for buying lots and lots of cereal foreign [Music]

Channel: David Lightbringer

Views: 126,514

Keywords: ironborn, iron islands, theon, asha, aeron, damphair, drowned god, deep ones, squishers, nimble dick, seastone chair, greyjoy, pyke, nagga, bones, sea dragon, victarion, euron, hammer of the waters, moat cailin, arm of dorne, Lightbringer, the Long Night, red comet, great empire of the dawn, lucifer means lightbringer, lml, david, moon meteors, alt shift x, in deep geek, theory, secrets, mythology, symbolism, ASOIAF, GoT, Game of Thrones, meteor, house of the dragon, explained, song of ice and fire

Id: rWdQ4iyBakU

Length: 74min 34sec (4474 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2023