What do you think about westeros? Good worldbuilding? Bad

The shape of both continents look like they were both squares originally before being chiseled away at.

Otherwise, George R R Martin managed to make some stories that captured enough of an audience that HBO wanted to make a TV series on it, so it was at least enough for that.

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Bad map, fun series.

Pretty sure it wouldn't be so popular today if the series still used its 80s/90s, pulpy covers. They're not "serious" enough.

>>55186285
Westeros, Essos, Planetos, The North, The Westerlands.

Such an inventive naming scheme.

>>55186901
I thought Planetos is a fan name. Don't remember reading it in the books once.

>>55186901
You forgot Sothoryos, and Ulthos the other two continents.

>>55186901
I don't even watch the show and I know that Planetos is a joke fan name.

>>55186285
I don't really find a single thing about the world interesting. It hits a lot of what people consider bad building too, so I'm not sure why anyone refers to it.

>>55186285
Not enough detail on the policies on taxation.

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>>55186285
I think it's a fantastic sandbox that's been poorly served
Certainly I enjoy reading about it, and considering that neither the tv show nor the fat man will detail even 10% of it, I think it offers a lot of imaginative potential

>>55186285
from someone who glanced at the show a few times, they're indistinguishable from one another, dragons notwithstanding, and the religion being bolted on as an afterthought and excuse for fuckery is standard HBO pandering just like the uninteresting nudity and meaningless violence. Kids are welcome to it, because when they're watching this show, they're not driving or writing into the parts of the internet that adults use.

>>55186449
Then no doubt /tv/ would love it; I've never seen a better example of nerd outrage at 'normies' invading their realm than the response to Game of Throne's popularity. If the show did not exist, this board would be all over it.

>>55186285
Naming conventions are lazy as fuck besides the essos free cities, the reach, and the vale
Dothraki are dumb
Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
Everything else is interesting or cool

>>55187592
>Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
>what is the north
it existed, but then the church of the seven went and removed them

The map is pure shit.

>>55186449
That's actually a pretty nice cover, the pulpyness is just the icing on the cake.

>>55187615
They lost baiscally all their power after maegor raped them
Wouldn't be too hard for neo pagans to crop up before sparrows are a thing

>>55187592
Iron Isles, is pagan, theres the island of the green men which you can see on the map who are also pagan. But otherwise yeah they don't have a huge presence.

>>55186449
the font needs to be changed but otherwise it's fabulous

>>55187592
>Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
>>55187615
>>55187674
>>55187710
Paganism and the faith of the Seven existing alongside would be pretty cool. I mean, from what I understand, people in Europe didn't just clearly move from paganism to Christianity. Pagans and Christians exited alongside in the samea reas, and more importantly, same people took part in both Christian and pagan religious rites. People believing in the Seven, but also showing respect to older gods just to be safe or because it's the done thing in times, would be pretty neat.

>>55186449
>Series so old Robert Jordan was still alive when it started
George pls

>>55187822
An interesting example of this can be seen in eastern Europe around the 11th century, where some Slavic peoples who practiced ancestor worship would demand their ancestors be baptized before they converted to Christianity.

>>55188034
That's the kind of thing fantasy writers could stand to learn from real history. In a lot of fantasy, even good fantasy, things tend to be sort of cleaner and more clear-cut in reality. Cultures, religions, and such tend to be more distinct from each other and purer in a way than in real life. Examples of different religious practices coexisting and mixing would go a long way towarda making fantasy settings more lifelike and believable.

>>55187822
>>55187674
well, they still exist in the north and in the iron islands

the south appears to be very much "team seven" tho- and i guess somehwhat LoL now that stannis brought that over

>>55186285
Fuck Westeros, we need to go to Sothoryos and see what's going on there.

>>55186285
It's got the best historical worldbuilding that I've ever seen. The War of the Five Kings, the (latest) Greyjoy rebellion, Robert's Rebellion, The War of the Ninepenny Kings; all of it follows smoothy from one event and generation to the next, all the way back to before Aegon's Conquest. The history of the setting actually feels like real history in a way most other fantasy novels don't even get close to.

That said, the map of Westeros and Essos looks like two rectangles awkwardly trying to fuck, so it's far from perfect.

>“A start?” said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. “Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end?”

>"Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. My Elia is fourteen, almost a woman. Obella is twelve, on the brink of maidenhood. They worship you, as Dorea and Loreza worship them. If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end? I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?"

Reminder that Doran is not a genius mastermind, but a dupe who's dooming Dorne with his revenge quest.

>>55188294
Nothing. It's africa. Get over it.

>>55186285
It should be noted that GRRM by his own admission literally does not engage in "worldbuilding" the same way some folks do on here; he did not write up Westeros and Essos and then write stories there, he wrote his story and as he began writing he spiraled off into adding details and background to flesh these backstories and histories of other people out and filled it out after the fact, pretty much like most professional authors.
Robert Baratheon wasn't created at the time as Robert's Rebellion; he needed a poor but publicly well-loved king to drive home the point that there is no such thing as "happy endings" where everything works out automatically and you get to quit living and that you have to deal with what comes afterword when you meet your grand goal, so he created the Rebellion.
Because he's a solid writer who understands that history shapes the personalities and events of modern people and that to some degree we are always the sum of past experiences of those who came before us he frequently does add lots of history to characters to flesh them out, but he doesn't worldbuild for the sake of worldbuilding.

He's admittedly openly in fact that his editor often has to remind him of minor character names and houses and details as he writes because they were created as background info to the story, not as a project in and of themselves.

>>55188861
What about all that stuff on the Targs and their history?

>>55188913
The Targaryen Dynasty seems to be the single most fleshed out part of the setting, with lots and lots and lots of detail, but that's because kings and their legacies is kind of a recurring theme in the series.
None of the other Great Houses have anything more then anecdotes about them despite most being around as long or longer then the Targs have ruled Westeros and being of equal importance to the plot at least.

>>55188682
He's a Targaryan loyalist whose dislikes the current regime cause they fucked up his House's bid to become top dogs by marrying his sister to the Crown Prince. Watching the Lannisters tear each other apart is a bonus.

>>55188913
Had to make an excuse to justify an entire royal dynasty being one big tribute to his incest and then he had to explain where all the bad ass dragons this family controlled went.

>>55187380
Not telling shit about your world is apparently world building.
>>55187343
This guy gets it

>>55186428
It's probably because the world consists of various maps that were all drawn to fit onto a page in a novel before being combined into a big world.

I find Essos' geography rather boring and unnaturally big compared to Westeros. It's like an afterthought.

>>55187822
>People believing in the Seven, but also showing respect to older gods just to be safe or because it's the done thing in times, would be pretty neat.
And most Noble Houses, kept their Godswood after converting to the Faith.

>worldbuilding
does anyone else find this term nauseating? Write a fucking story

>>55190043
I do not find it nauseating precisely but as someone who writes a lot and not only for my regularly scheduled D&D game or whatever it is, I am aware that there is a strong difference.
It's like writing for a newspaper versus writing for a fiction novel; they're completely different things that share a skill the same way walking down a paved sidewalk in a clean neighborhood and hiking up Mount Everest both involve your legs at some point; vastly different executions.

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>>55190043
It's just you

>>55187822
>after maegor crushed the faith the new high septon was much more passive
>he rewrote the entire religion
>the new church is more about keeping the peace and keeping the peasents safe than the good old fire and brimstone
>instead of chocking new religions in their cribs the new church preaches helping these new religions develop past their barabaric stages into more productive and civilized beliefs
>for the most part the new church is just an extention of the kings power and a tool in for him to use to try to stop holy wars between the seven kingdoms years before they begin
>however the septons have grown fat and lazy leading to several relgious wars over the centurys

>>55186285
It's ok.

>>55186285
The map and world as a whole aren't too great, but there are plenty of cool individual locations and history

>>55190194
>afyer the new church is established many of the more zealous septons ran away from kingslanding and settled in the vale
>traditionalist believe that the andals are the chosen people of the seven and all others should kneel before them
>take much stranger stances on sins than the new church and doesn't care about peasents
>most religious wars in the seven kingdoms is started by traditionalist catching a whif of a new religion and trying to kick the shit out of it
>this has led to several crown v vale wars which is usually some of the most bloody wars in westeros history because its the fuckivaleous
>traditionalist are also very anti valyrian and want pure blooded andal kings

>>55190043
Considering that it's a term that makes sense and isn't in any way incompatible with "writing a fucking story", finding the term nauseating requires some kind of brain problems.

>>55190272
>other sects of the faith include the church of baelor who just want to build cool shit in the name of the seven, the sparrows who mix traditionlost ideals and new church ideals,and a weird northern church who believe the old gods fathered the new gods and that the new gods are their rightful heirs

>>55188500
>It's got the best historical worldbuilding that I've ever seen.
The dynasties are way too stable.

>>55186285
It depends on the angle. As far as the familial relationships, grudges, alliances and assorted politics go, it's excellent. As a logically consistent fantasy world, it's shit. Also, for something that purports to show the "true face of the middle ages", it sure focuses a hell of a lot on everything constantly being the level of shit that actual Europe barely ever got to.

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>series sold on "realism"
>800 foot walls and a poor emulation of medieval politics and society
GoT will pollute the fantasy genre

>>55188682
Reminder that Ellaria Sand gleefully kills Myrcella in the show.

>>55190484
Considering that ASoIaF is still better than most of the fantasy genre, that isn't actually a terrible thing. Writers getting interested in doing what this series tries to do or claims to have done can only be a positive thing, I'd say. Sure, there will be a lot of derivative crap - which is business as usual, not a new development - but there are bound to also be writers who'll pull off the medieval politic and sort of fantastic realism and all that.

>>55190043
I do too. People get overly consumed with it and they just make shit up to make shit up rather than using it for any interesting artistic purpose.

>>55190513
Cersei's revenge on her for that is amazing.

>>55190513
It's kinda funny; Dorne was widely criticized for adding new characters and new storylines in book 4 and having it all amount to very little in the book itself, and the show's solution was to apparently take all of those characters and boil them down to ONE character and to make an existing character also exactly like that one character, to drag the plotline out even longer and make it somehow matter even less then it already did, and finally just kill off the entirety of the Dornish cast in the new season rather then deal with it any longer.

They somehow made the least liked and least relevant part of the novels even less liked and less relevant.
I can't decide if that's impressive or what.

>>55190484
Oh, the fantasy genre was horseshit already and don't pretend it wasn't.
Pretty much ALL entertainment genres are filled almost entirely with complete fucking garbage which is why you only really remember a few of them.
Taking a piss in a toilet that someone already forgot to flush doesn't make it any worse.

>>55187592
One thing I appreciate is the same names being everywhere like Robert and such

>>55186285
It's better than 99% of fantasy worlds because it is internally consistent, has a single worldbuilder instead of a bunch of freelancers, and has strong aesthetics that can be easily adapted to players.

>>55187822
It's been literally 1000 years since the Andal Crusades conquered Westeros. I'd say the amount of "paganism" is more than you'd expect given that fact.

>>55191521
That's because Dorne and the Vale are like Euron; they're intended to come in later in the war/history as other stronger powers weaken and die off.

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>>55186428

>>55191735
Does this "History" not take place within one year or something in the books?
That was my biggest gripe with it.

>>55190734
Bandwagoners have come and gone. Mainly it's people who treated the knowledge they could say fuck and talk about tits and rape as the saviour of the genre and simply try and pile on cynical shit ("all the heroes are actually bad guys!!!2") instead of actually including any depth or nuance. At least derivative high fantasy is less pretentious.

>>55193153
No? The War of the 5 Kings is at least 4 years long by Book 4. The first book is all 1 year.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmKhGqWcJGY

>>55192686
I had no idea, wow.

>>55193388
Repeating digits are always right.

>>55193631
It works for england and the upper part of westeros to.

>>55187571
This 100%.
I actually read the books before the show because of /lit/. Pretty pathetic when a fanbase ruins your enjoyment of a thing.

>>55186428
Honestly, most real life countries and landmasses look like that, anon.

>>55186901
>Implying that literally every real place name isn't literally a bastardisation of a generic word in a some random language.

>>55193976
The fucking earth fits into a rectangle if you want to be that reductive about it.

>>55193153
The entire thing has taken place over about 4 and a half years or so.
Each book is about a year, while 4 and 5 mostly take place about the same time and the closing chapters of book 5 takes place over a few months or so.
The show is much worse about passage of time then the books because a lot of the show watchers don't care about the internal consistency and silly shit like Littlefinger teleporting across Westeros to appear in multiple scenes as a way to visually indicate intrigue is happening.
I mean Dany in the final episode of the last season somehow crossed a distance of hundreds and hundreds of miles from Dragonstone to somewhere far north of the Wall just to make a dramatic rescue of Jon so she could properly fuck her cousin.

>>55194267
Exactly my point.

>>55194323
what ass are you pulling this out of?

>>55186285
The way the kingdom is ruled is unrealistic. It seems that the small council rules everything alone, and the maesters and the lords rule the great provinces(North, Vale, etc) by their own.
The weather should have killed most humans a long time ago to the point even small villages would not exist.
Cities are positioned on weird places. Lannisport and Oldtown are on the wrong place . I

>>55191661
It has been far more than 1000 years

>>55193960
I believe the wheel of time fanbase and asoiaf used to argue all the time before the show.

>>55194323
>I mean Dany in the final episode of the last season somehow crossed a distance of hundreds and hundreds of miles from Dragonstone to somewhere far north of the Wall just to make a dramatic rescue of Jon so she could properly fuck her cousin.
that was second last episode and wasn't a fast magic teleport. The were stuck on that island for at least a day, long enough for thoros to die and freeze and the lake to refreeze and freeze more solidly. they just time skipped the boring stareing constest.

>>55186285
A bit of both.
George is bad with maps and scale, to name one thing, but I find the people inhabiting the world to be rather compelling.
All in all I've had fun with the books. Would play in the setting.

>>55187380
This is neat.

>>55193616
This is fucking hilarious. I laughed for a good two minutes.

>>55189688
>Not telling shit about your world is apparently world building.
Oh fuck off, I'd rather an open sandbox that provides the tools for gaming rather than some autistically restrictive "canon" where I have nerds whining all the time

>>55196953
Aren't we talking about a book, though?

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>>55195293
I love this mappamundi style
All the easter eggs are a treat too
Here's a huge 10mb version of that Westeros map:
https://mega.nz/#!6l8HiKpA!KCoTRT119Wk3oOVKsPjkS-xPCY009Kpz_saBXynl9a4

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>>55197118
forgot this link too, it's all the maps of this style I could find
http://imgur.com/a/mY4e6

>>55197118
>The Shadow

What's that about? Looks neat.

>>55197832
Like a lot of things it's all left a little vague, but it's implied to be like the inverse of the North: with a wall of fire instead of ice, keeping back shadow monsters instead of snow ones

>>55197864
Huh neato.

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>>55197832
Land of spookiness beyond Asshai in the far East. We know next to nothing about it.

Supposedly Dragons originated there and were tamed by people so ancient they had no name. Dragons and deamons supposedly still live there.

At it's center is a ruined city so ancient and horrible that even the Shadowbinders refuse to enter.

Ghost grass is a luminescent and invasive plant that grows taller than a man and chokes out all other grasses. Supposedly it originates in the Shadow.

There are reavers and pirates that live in the Shadow, they're known for their full body tattoos and red lacquer masks.

Here's a weirdly cropped map that shows it's geographical relation to the rest of Planetos. Asshai should be on the bottom tip but it's cut off.

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>>55197896
Also, for what it's worth, here's a now incorrect fan map that I use as a partial basis for the modified map I use in my ASoIaF games, because I don't like Eastern Essos in the canon map very much.

>>55186449
I fucking love those.

>>55195122
https://youtu.be/fIqOf0qI2H4?t=588

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>>55197926
DEEPEST LORE

>>55197962
That's some kirkbride levels of stupid.

>>55195122
It takes 2 weeks by horseback along the king's road to reach winterfell from dragonstone. Gendry ran a marathon, then delivered a message, which caused a raven to be sent about twice that distance, and then a dragon flew at supersonic speeds without tearing dany's skin off or killing her from exposure in less than a day

According to your timeline.

Your timeline sucks.

>>55197962
Is this just a bizarre way of trying to show the land of alwaya winter and the grey waste are connected and the weateros and essos aren't actually seperate continents.

>>55186428
>>55197962
Or a map generated in Sid Meier's Civilization.

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>>55198124
Nah it's just a silly /got/ meme
Although there is long-standing debate among nerds about how everything joins up, for example there's the famous case of a ship from Asshai washing up on the Frozen Shore

>>55198183
A ship washes up on a shore....... That's supposed to b surprising?

>>55198326
In this case it's equivalent to a ship from India washing up on a beach in Iceland in the 1400s, but even more exceptional under the circumstances

>>55198349
a ship could sail most of the waynbefore being wrecked.
Its an unusual event but I wouldn't consider it relevant to discussions of the relations of the landmasses.
If ashai wrecks on the frezen shore was a common and frequent occupance then it might be worth considering.

gurm is a hack

>>55187571
it was shit before the show too

I nearly got into a fistfight with my autistic brother in law because he loved the books so much and was triggered when i said they sucked and went into detail about why

>>55198680

Should have beat your bitch ass to be honest.

>>55198680
bet you are not going into detail here tho where there are no physcial consequences huh

>>55187571

The show is legitimately awful though, even before getting into its fan base.

>>55194009

>Cambridge
>literally where there's a bridge over the river Cam

bravo england

>>55198950
>Novgorod
>Literally "A new city"
>Slavs built a new city and called it "A new city"
Bravo, eternal Ivan!

>>55198950

It's the other way around. They called it the Cam after Cambridge.

>>55186285
It's pretty bad.

>>55187571
The first book was pretty good, I'll admit. But the second and third were so boring and predictable that I stopped reading the series entirely and didn't even remember it was a thing until the HBO series started.

>>55200354
Did you see Red Wedding coming?

>>55199139
>rocky mountains
>literally mountains made of rock
Bravo American, *applauds*.

The rectangle always fucking annoyed me, sure it could happen but it looks so fucking dumb.

>>55192686
Just underlines how little sense those coastlines make. Westeros, like Ireland, has a massive ocean on its west coast and a narrow channel on its east. How tf did all those deep inlets get eroded into it along the "Narrow Sea"

>>55191521
The irritating thing about Dorne in the books is that it sets up major plot developments and then just never delivers them because Martin doesn't give a shit about the story any more, but characters like Doran and Arianne are in themselves perfectly solid, have motivations that make sense, and the overall arc that's being set up is a logical progression of the story to date.

The dornish characters in the show just enact retarded plots on baffling motivations and have them succeed for no reason. How does fucking Ellaria Sand take power by stabbing the legitimate Prince of Dorne?

>>55200273
The original name of Cambridge still means the bridge crossing whatever the River Cam was called before, though.

>>55200466
Hey, give credit where credit is due. They're also rocky.

>>55200444
Yes. For one, it was clear that Robb wasn't an important character as he didn't have any POV chapters. For two, in my mind at least, it seemed to be foreshadowed pretty heavily from about where he killed Karstark, or whatever the dude's name was, up until he took a new wife and expected the guys on the bridge to be fine with it.

>>55200634
>For one, it was clear that Robb wasn't an important character as he didn't have any POV chapters.
I guess Tywin wasn't important either and Brienne is clearly a central character.

>>55188861
>he's a solid writer

Solid fat

>>55200644
>I guess Tywin wasn't important
The dude who dies just a few chapters later?

>Brienne is clearly a central character.
Literally what?
The only characters who actually have central roles in the narrative are like Jon, Dany, and Cersei.

GRRM is a microcosm of what this board is. A dumb, poorly educated man trying to make a complex and smart story

>>55200705
I would have said a fat weirdo turning his sexual fantasies into stories about dragons, but yours works too

>>55198183
There's also the shared myths concerning the Long Night, heavily implying that the eastern part of Essos at least somehow connects to Westeros.

>>55198511
You're forgetting who our author is.

>>55197962
When was that particular design made canon?

>>55200669
The funny thing, you probably mean what you say.

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>the continent where the series is set has hundreds of petty lordships, interesting coastlines and dramatic changes in climate
>the other known continent is plains and forests lol "here be dragons"

Why is this always a trope

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>>55201028

I've just realised something, to be fair

>>55201028
>why do places we know little about seem less nuanced than places we know a lot about
It's a real mystery.

>>55200499
prehistoric glacial valleys before relatively recent sea level rising.

>>55200742
>Long Night, heavily implying that the eastern part of Essos at least somehow connects to Westeros.
GRRM has directly stated it doesn't in an interview.

though that doesn't preclude the idea that essos and westeros get pretty close "off the map" and sea ice can form a bridge for the armies of the dead.

>>55201081
just realised what?

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>>55201163
>stated it doesn't
He's a fucking retard then, it makes no sense for the long night to happen in both essos and westeros if they're not somehow connected.

>>55201177
probably the scale between densely populated europe proper and the infinite vodka wastelands of eastern europe

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>>55187343
>feudal society
>"policies"
Sheriff of Westerosham shows up randomly and takes your shit because fuck you.

>>55201362
thats why i mentioned sea ice. It would allow the Others to cross between the continents (assuming essos goes further north off the map) even if they're not actually connected. Like how in the real world one could in principle walk from greenland to russia over the arctic ice.
Sea ice may only expand and get thick enough to support this during long winters, which is why they don't attack every winter.

>>55194009
That's literally how allmost all the cities in my country are named.

And I much prefer that to baloney fantasy names that are 100% made up for every location.

>>55186285
ha ha no one is happy ever isn't that a great story

>>55199139
>found a new land
>Newfoundland

Genius.

>>55203666
Granted, probably better than a more descriptive name, like "Coldshithole".

>>55204904
Iceland went with that method of naming.

>>55200499
Children of the forest tried to use magic to cut Westeros in half.

>>55198687
Why is it that so many fans take such great offense at other people not liking what they like?

>>55207518
Why is that so many people take such great offense at other people liking what they don't like?

Could I get a rundown on Valyria? That part of GoT lore interests me.

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>>55207709
The Valyrian Freehold is what happens when you mix Atlantis with dragons.
They were so powerful and mighty that they blew themselves up in a conflagration of awesome.

The end.

>>55207709
Great magic civilisation who enslaved the world with their dragons. One day Valyria explodes, this cataclysmic event may have been caused by the mysterious Faceless Men.

The only surviving High Valyrians are the Targaryens, who fled west to Dragonstone because one of them had a dream of destruction.

>>55207893
>may have been caused by the mysterious Faceless Men.

I could never buy this. They clearly had a part in it, but to say they were solely to blame for The Doom is a massive fucking stretch.

>>55207934
Well, we don't know for sure, and I don't know if we ever will know. But who else has the motive, and the means?

>>55192686
>Oldtown, the centre of learning and enlightenment in all of Westeros, is literally Belfast
>The prosperous and powerful capital of Kings Landing is Galway

But Dublin is roughly Casterly Rock/Lannisport, so nothing out of the ordinary there

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>>55186285
I have no idea how a purely feudal society could retain such a titanic realm.

It wouldve been Holy Roman Empired at least.

>>55207934
The Faceless probably took advantage of the hubris and infighting among the elite of the Freehold.

That said, the sorcerers they supposedly 'assassinated' were powerful enough to hold together a landmass the size of India. It's hard to picture how they would have killed such powerful users of magic.

Disguises won't cut it, as divination just cancels that out, along with superior illusionary magic.

>>55208135
>I have no idea how
No one has. The one excuse that's brought up is "muh draguns" which doesn't really explain much, and certainly not the last, what, 150 years that there have been no dragons and the realm stayed intact just fine.

How would the Valyrian Freehold fare against the Others/White-Walkers ?

>>55208252
It took three dragons to conquer a continent. Valyria had hundreds.
The Others come with the winter/ice age, as do other threats around the world.

Valyria would more than likely decimate them.

>>55208349
It's weird that Valyria didn't conquer all of Essos and restricted itself to just one peninsula.

>>55208487
They did did they not?
There are Valyrian roads running the length of the continent, and Valyrian is the lingua franca of Essos.
Also, wasn't Braavos notable for not being part of Valyria, because it was founded by escaped slaves who were hiding in the swamps

>>55208487

They conquered most of Essos, they did not care to spread further beyond the Bone Mountains or the Narrow Sea.

>>55208487
The Peninsula was their homeland but they conquered all the free cities except for Braavos, they built Volantis, and they conquered the Ghiscari slave kingdom, burning their original capital to the ground.

>>55208349
Not to mention they had the secrets of Valyrian steel, so weapons made of it was common place among their aristocracy, and the land was rich in Obsidian.

>>55208583
Why not? Why not just take everything? They were clearly powerhungry and capable. Just one family could conquer all of Westeros.

>>55208730
Valyrians were hubristic. According to Martin's own design, they never even wanted to step on the ground because they deserves to live in their topless towers and in the sky on their dragons.

They did not give a shit, they already thought they were better than everyone else.

>>55208730
The Ghiscari were pissy and had frequent rebellions and Braavos actively sabotaged all of their naval efforts while hiding their own city with pseudo magics.

Westeros also isn't nearly as wealthy as the Free cities and almost every culture on the continent held a different faith, not to mention anti slavery beliefs, unlike Essos. However the Targaryens might have been planning to conquer the continent themselves before the Doom struck, since they were already situated on the Island of Dragonstone

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>>55197896
Its pretty implied that the tales of the far east are just that though, tales, or at least exaggerations. Its like all the strange shit Medieval people thought lurked in the rest of the world, which in the end turned out to be just as mundane as everywhere else.

>>55186285
>Good Worldbuilding

Asoiaf's worldbuilding is pretty lazy. Its all just ripped from real world history with magic and shit thrown in. GRRM remands me of someone like Howard. Someone who wanted to write historical fiction, but was too lazy to do research.

>>55208824
>since they were already situated on the Island of Dragonstone
Dragonstone was part of the Valyrian Freehold since long before that, and the reason the Targs went there was because one of them saw the destruction of Valyria in a dream.

That said, it certainly seems like they had had their eyes on Westeros for a while seeing as how they went for it rather than attempting to reconquer the Free Cities.

>>55186285
The world is pretty rich and allows a lot of leeway for your own ideas
So I'd say it's pretty well built, dynasties and families are well described, and so are the lands

>>55208349
Well, it's not known what the Others can do against dragonfire
Judging by the show: Fire tends to die out as soon as Walkers get near them, so I guess they're resistant if not outright immune to fire
Dragons may not even be able to do shit against them

>>55209169
You're confusing immunity with temperature neutralization.

Considering dragonglass is "frozen fire", I imagine the Other's would be even more susceptible to dragon fire.

>>55209169
From the show we see Dragons wrecking wights quite easily, but NK's spear skills already killed one of them.
Just imagine if Cersi wasn't a sociopathic cunt and sent Jamie to the North with all the wildfire they could move.

>>55209307
You realize the spear hit the fire-breathing sack, right? Why do you think there was an explosion?

>>55209332
I noticed this. Either the Night's King was lucky or he figured as much on the spot.

>>55208685
Valyrians also had the greatest sorcerers in the known world. Wizards on top of dragons is a scary thing.

>>55200548
In all fairness the Dornish storyline in Winds of Winter seems to be fairly important seeing as one of the sample chapters involved Arianne trying to figure weather they want to side with Dany or Egg 2.0.
Part of the problem with Dorne in the 4th book is that the 4th book and the 5th book are the SAME BOOK, and splitting them into two separate novels fucks with the pacing a bit:

>>55186901
>Pakistan
>Afghanistan
>Pakistan
>Uzbekistan

Wow such an inventive naming scheme what hack made this world

>>55207934, >>55208049
What it SAID is that the Valyrian kept killing slaves to blood sacrifice to the volcano the main part of the Freehold was built on to power their fire magics as well as hatch their dragons, and eventually they lost control of it.
How they lost control of it is unknown.

>>55208148
>Disguises won't cut it, as divination just cancels that out, along with superior illusionary magic.
You say that but divination in thesetting is fucking awful and not very helpful.
It's basically just vague imagery that you know is "true" but is so open to interpretation that five people can give five different versions of the vision and technically all can be correct.

>>55209590
Blood sacrifice was never mentioned. Only stated that sorcerers kept the Fourteen Fires at bay.

>>55209631
Not really. It depends on far reaching the vision is. Moqorro uses it to survive quite handily.

>>55209169, >>55209277
Martin said before the Others really showed up in the show that Fire "dismays" them and they aren't immune to it but that it's less effective then dragonglass and "dragonsteel", whatever that is.
Probably Valyrian steel but WTF were people in the North doing with Valyrian steel presumably 3000 years before Valyria was even a thing?

>>55209590
>>55209685

Apparently the infighting caused the assassinations of these sorcerers. Their own hubris caused their fall.

>>55209713
Valyrians might not have been the first creators of "dragonsteel".

There were precursor dragon civilizations around the world supposedly. Valyria just refined everything.

>>55209717
It fits.
The Valyrians seem like a staggeringly arrogant people, though perhaps that's a given considering their accomplishments.

>>55209737
You know, given that a lot of magic seems to require you loosing something (or killing something) to power it in the setting, I wonder if the reason you can't make more Valyrian steel and only reforge it is because it requires some kind of human sacrifice, some sort of quenching the stuff in blood type thing?
That would kind of fit in the Lightbringer myth slightly, assuming that the fable is literal and not allegory.

Yeah, the only nation to best three dragons in history were the Rhoynar, and it took 250,000 men against actual Dragonlords. They barely survived.

Then Valyria got mad and sent 300 dragons and turned the river into red "steam".

I don't see how the White-Walkers are going to win this.

>>55209815
the free-city of Qohor tried to forge Valyrian steel by sacrificing infants. It didn't work, but there might have been a grain of truth to it.

>>55209830
Actually the Dornish killed one of Aegon the Conqueror's dragons.
And if you read the history book, the tactics he employed when using them were significantly more complex then "dragon breaths fire, everyone dies" and he employed them EXTREMELY sparingly during his conquest.

As in a total of less then five times level of sparingly.

>>55209883
The Dornish were an outlier. They actually had terrain advantages. This was made pretty clear.

It was probably my favorite part of the world book.

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>>55209883
>Actually
>And if you read the history

Here comes the nerd that assumes everyone is lesser to him and haven't read the books themselves.

Since there's no asoiaf general I might as well ask it here since it might come up in my game. Would it be unseemly for a lord to name his daughter the queen of love and beauty after winning a tournament if his wife isn't present? Is it supposed to be a more romantic thing?

>>55209858
Right method, wrong process maybe.
>>55209962
That makes no sense at all. How can anyone be expected to know something they never learned? Only an idiot acts like that.
I was just noting that the usage of the dragons seems a bit more complex then just flying over shit and hitting the win button, though I imagine having ONLY three dragons really limits your tactical options.

>>55210038
This depends. If it's an open field it's pretty much an "I win button", especially if you have more than one dragon.

Natural barriers are another matter entirely. The Dornish weren't retards and actually used this to their advantage, unlike everyone else in Westeros, even those nations that also had natural barriers. *cough* *cough* The Vale *cough*

>>55210038
>though I imagine having ONLY three dragons really limits your tactical options.
How did that work anyway?
Did they inbreed the dragons too? Maybe that's why they got smaller and weaker?

>>55210038
There's a point when tactics just doesn't matter in the face of overkill. Imagine three hundred dragons being sent to Dorne. There's just no way.

>>55210087
The dragons got smaller and weaker because they locked them up. Dragons never stop growing.

That and magic was slowly in decline.

>>55210087
Dragons are asexual, like some kinds of frogs and can switch genders for the process of procreation.
Most are referred to as "male" but really the word isn't as accurate as it is for us.

>>55210069
To be fair, Dorne's whole independence thing doesn't make...a whole lot of sense considering Dorne. Like, they wage guerrilla warfare in a super harsh desert where all the life giving waters are where their cities are. You'd expect Dorne to instead be a place where the cities folded out of fear of dragonfire and then there was some outlying people who pretended that the war was still going.

>>55210098
Twenty dragons of full size would be damn near unkillable honestly; the luck and strategizing it takes to kill just ONE using traps and positioning is hard to fucking come by, so Egg the C was probably just so conservative with them because a single loss was basically nearly unaffordable until he could get more.

>>55210123
I think Dornish folks are just fuckin' mean when provoked cos goddamn.
That shit with Orys Baratheon is kind of ridiculous.

>>55210182
I never really liked Dorne just because it felt like the kingdom was set up to be TOO ideal from the sound of it.

>we get to the ONLY one who beat those dragons because we're smart!
>breaks peace negotiations, no one punishes them for it
>we're equal rights for all genders and we tolerate homosexuality!

I don't hate a kingdom having those last two, but on top of how much else they've gotten going right for them, it just sorta feels kinda absurd that this one kingdom just always seems to get it their way.

>>55208868
I would say quite allot of animals from australia and africa were pretty wild for your standard medieval europeans.

>>55209504
The British in this case

>>55209504
>pakistan
a literal made up name.

>>55210285
>brits made up the name -stan suffixes.
Didn't know that farsi was made by the eternal anglo.

Weren't the Children of the Forest also really powerful with magic?

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>>55197962
>Westeros is a timecube
It all makes sense

>>55210242
>we get to the ONLY one who beat those dragons because we're smart!
They beat A dragon and a lot of that was positing and possibly luck; it's still not know how they did it. My guess was at some point Egg the C's sister landed in the Dornish Marches for a rest and a bite to eat and they killed them both on the ground, given the prevelance of boring yet effective tactics in the setting.
>breaks peace negotiations, no one punishes them for it
It's mostly those fuckin' mountains.
Getting to them means sailing a huge fleet of going through a bottleneck that they already control, which is why the Young Dragon used a fleet.
>we're equal rights for all genders and we tolerate homosexuality!
Westeros seems fairly tolerant of it in general as long as you manage to make an heir. Lynn Corbray for example in the books is "notoriously uninterested in the charms of women" and one of Egg's (of Dunk and Egg) own sons was uninterested in women and spent all of his time around a squire and was still quite loved by the people.

I don't think they have the religious reasons for disliking homosexuality but there's heavy importance placed on legitimate heirs, which a homosexual would likely not make more of without being forced.
Dorne conversely basically openly allows you to keep misteress and treats them as "Wife/Husband 2" practically which allows for easier securing of heirs.
And mysoginy isn't dead by any means in Dorne, women just have equal inheritance rights and stuff like that. Gurm even clarified that while Dornish warrior-women were certainly possible they weren't any more common then they are in Westeros proper and there's no Dornish "female knights".

Part of the problem is that Oberyn was the first major insight to the culture and he is not really a good example of an "average" Dornish lord by any means. Most of them don't even have different skin tones or anything.

>>55210402
extremely, at least in the show

>>55200354
Pretty nice my experience. In the third book I just shipped everything that wassingle a pov character I liked.

The first book is refreshing, I'm they it doesn't coddle "protagonist" characters. But after a while the novelty runs out.

>>55210527
They turned the Children of the Forest into cliché elves in the show, something Martin has been against since the first book.

They don't live for thousands of years, only a couple hundred at best. The Three Eyed Raven itself is younger than Melisandre, not a thousand.

The show is ass.

The Night's King isn't even real in the novels, only a legend. Not that we've seen enough yet.

>>55210888
>The Night's King isn't even real in the novels
the show brought him in to replace Euron

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>>55210888
The Children are supposed to look like weird feral squirrel people. With cat like eyes and sharp claws/feet.

>>55210935
Too bad, they're green lesbians now.

>>55210402
They broke the landmass connecting Westeros to Essos with magic, flooded the neck and helped build the wall. Powerful, yes.

Still not as impressive as Valyrian magic.

>>55207893
>The only surviving High Valyrians are the Targaryens
More precisely, the only surviving line of Dragonlords are the Targaryens and, de facto, the Blackfyres. The other Valyrian families that survived were not Dragonlords, which were only like 3 dozen noble families that dominated Valyria because dragons were only tamable by them.

Houses Velaryon and Celtigar are confirmed Valyrians, and Dayne might also be Valyrians since they resemble them greatly and have a name with a -y in it.

>>55210976
The only impressive thing about valyrians is the impressive speed at which they went from a casterfag's wet dream to an apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by stone people.

>>55211013
Their sorcerers held a landmass the size of India from blowing up for thousands of years. They erected magical empire state buildings in a medieval setting.

They were quite impressive.

>>55210888
>The Night's King isn't even real in the novels, only a legend. Not that we've seen enough yet.
Exactly. You have no idea if he's real or not, or if he's leading the Others or not.

>>55211000
Also, there have been Velaryons who have dragon-riding ability because of interbreeding with Targaryens, so there can be other dragonlords. Like Jon and Tyrion.

>>55211054
I'm inclined to believe it will be a different character to lead the Others, not the actual Night's King.

>>55209357
i just figured its a magic spear. plus the Others are sure to have encountered and had to deal with dragons before.

>>55211134
>plus the Others are sure to have encountered and had to deal with dragons before.

Maybe, maybe not. Probably not.

>>55211134
Dragons as we know them might have been bred by the Valyrians, mixing Wyrms and Wyverns together.

If so, the Others predate them.

>>55211072
Why would Tyrion have it?

>>55211214
Tyrion might be the son of the Mad King.

I repeat. Might be.

>>55211249
What's this based on? He doesn't have purple eyes and there's no history of dwarfism in the Targs.

>>55211323
The idea that he was born of rape and that's why he doesn't look like a Lannister. Also the idea that that's why Tywin and Aerys hated each other at the end.

>>55211323
There are a few hints in the books, I don't buy it but it's understandable
>Tyrions hair so blonde they almost look white (iirc)
>The Mad King wanted to shag Tywin's wife and made no secret of it
>Tywin resigning as Hand around the time Tyrion was born
>Young Tyrion dreaming of dragons
>Some Tywin lines like "I cannot prove that you're not mine" or the infamous "You're not my son" he says right before dying

>>55211391
>the infamous "You're not my son" he says right before dying
https://youtu.be/gV9t9Db4nkE?t=182

Most of the peoples and characters are just real world shit with the serial numbers filed off.
But seeing as how everyone from GeeDubs to Tolkein did the same thing then yeah it's fine.

I really hope that the maester conspiracy is real otherwise the fact that the same social structures, and sometimes entire noble lines mantained themselves for thousands of years is a total bullshit event for a fantasy.

>>55211526
It's bullshit for sure, but that kind of complete stagnation for untold millenia is not exactly uncommon in fantasy.

>>55211526
It definitely true. I find it humorous when people argue about Valerian powerlevels and shit when Westerosi history is so obviously unreliable.

>>55209713
I've kinda been asuming that dragonsteel is steel that was forged and/or smelted by dragon fire.

>>55211526
Maesters hate magic, as it's not a science and cannot be understood.

Marwyn blames them for the decline of dragons and the suppression of magic in the West. Even keeping Maester Aemon at the Wall.

>actually calling something "blackfyre" in your fucking series

>>55186285

But what was Daenerys's tax policy?

>>55211730
>as it's not a science and cannot be understood
Not sure this is their motivation - they do study magic after all, and they have link for it in their chains. I think it's just dragons they have a problem with, and since magic and dragons are interconnected...

>>55186285
It's basically thieves world, with more magic I guess

>>55211797
We don't get her tax policy, but the entirety of ADwD is her tryung diplomacy with terrorists.

>>55194009
>Canada
>misheard the native word for village and thought it meant the whole country
Bravo

>>55211391
That makes sense, but I really wish that Jaime and Cersei were actually Aerys' children, not Tyrion

>>55211730
>>55211730
That shit is probably true, but aside that it sparked theories about the maesters using their monopoly on Westerosi knowledge and information for their secret agenda. A common one is about maesters covering something with thousands years of nothing, or at least stretching the times to strenghten the current social structure as something set in stone for thousands of years. E.g. Jon is officially the 998th LC of the NW, but when Sam goes through the records he finds out there were probably less than half

>>55211526
what's the maester conspiracy?

>>55211814
No. It is. Read the books. The origins of the Citadel are rooted in it. They hate everything magical. Valyrian steel links are frowned upon.

>>55212068
That's really dumb though. Like, the Nazis banning "Jewish Physics" dumb.

>>55212055
Maesters poisoned the dragons (and possibly the Targaryen heirs), caused the Dance of Dragons and made sure the Targaryen dynasty is destroyed.
There are maesters that behave suspiciously in early books (maester Luwin is a little too insistent that magic is gone forever), but in the last two we get much more. In ADwD, Lady Dustin shares her suspicions about the order - you don't know which families they came from, you don't know where they loyalties lie, medicine and poisons are trusted to them, and so are reading and writing letters. She calls them (((grey rats))) and distrusts them. For a good reason - because in AFFC Maester Marwin claims that the Citadel wants the world without dragons, and magic, and glass candles.

>>55212055
The maesters are the jews of westeros and they're behind
>disappearance of magic
>disappearance of dragons
>(possibly) Robert's Rebellion and disappearance of Targaryens
>impossibly long cronologies

>>55212124
Not really. Magic is dangerous in ASoIaF. It's not something you can reason with. Maesters crave understanding, they get none of that with magic.

>>55212176
Which is ironic, considering Jewish culture is full of magical shit. Solomon, Moses, Kabbalah, etc.

>>55212235
Moqorro seems to understand it just fine. Maybe the maesters are just dumb.

>>55212265
That's called faith, lol.

Wizards > Clerics

Don't hate me

>>55212265
There's a difference between working magic and understanding how it works at its core. It's uncertain and doesn't always work. It's like a living force on its own.

>>55212301
Wizards and clerics are the same thing in ASoIaF

>>55212235
Except not knowing shit about it is even more dangerous.

>>55212362
Yes, which is why they want it gone.

>>55211054
The Night's King in the novels was a human, not an Other.

>>55211674
Yeah, it's a theory with less actual evidence to support it then Tyrion Aerys' bastard.

>>55212504
He's always been a human. He was just turned into an Other.

>>55211860
the city I live in has its name taken from the Aboriginal word for the bay its adjacent to, and the bay is named after the aboriginal name for the land of the area.

>>55212068
No, they're just uncommon.
Maesters don't dislike magic, it's just annoying because if you DO study it you end up discovering that you can't reliably control it and there are not hard rules for it that the Maesters know.
Basically magic in that setting appears to work on weird nonsensical fairytale logic for the most part, whereas the Maesters wish it would work like ACTUAL logic and get frustrated when it does.

They see it like getting a PhD in Squirrel Fucking; why would you bother getting a doctorate on something so ridiculously specific and useless when literally ANY other form of knowledge is practical to them?

>>55212612
According to Maester Marwyn you're dead wrong.

Those bastard Maesters are responsible for the decline of the Dragons and the suppression of the Targaryen line.

>>55212583
Martin had suggested that the Others aren't human at all as per the show.
In fact he's even hinted that they might not even explicitly be "evil" to a comic author trying to draw them; the comic author basically said that he could talk a lot about what they were NOT but not about what they were because that was harder to explain.
It's possible that there's nothing human about them and that they're basically just another form of life that's completely hostile and alien to all other forms of it they encounter just by nature; they kill regular life and end it not because they hate it or are cruel but because that's just how they work, akin to how we breathe carbon doxide which is poison to some creatures.

I could see this being true because ultimately D&D would want to explain an "origin" for the Others because hinting shit and vague insinuations is a bit too subtle for the guys who thought plot relevant details were boring and thus must be combined with sex scenes.

>>55212664
I'd honestly be willing to take fair bets with you on this, but if we're both being honest it'll be so goddamn long until we get an answer, assuming we EVER get a straight answer, that both of us will have forgotten this conversation by the time we do.

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>>55212687
Martin compared the Others to the Sidhe, beautiful evil fae folk.

White-walkers look nothing like their book counterparts.

>>55212723
They also apparently steal bits of your soul if you sleep with them.

a la the Night's King with his "pale white bride"

>>55212723
Yeah, the White Walkers in the show are basically just Ice-Themed Zombies+ rather then wights usual Ice-Theme Zombies dealio.

>Wights can only be killed by fire
>Oh, also by dragonglass
>And valyrian steel
>Except when they can't
>Sometimes regular weapons also work
>Except when they don't
>Wights are hard to kill, even after being chopped to pieces, they continue moving
>Except when they don't

I fucking hate how the show can't keep it consistent. ONE wight is a deadly threat that can't be killed by anything except for fire. But if there are dozens of them? Suddenly all their invulnerabilities are stripped away, and they fall apart easily.
You can't just do things like that and expect us to take the army of the dead seriously. Oh sure, they're a threat, falling apart after being hit with a regular hammer.

>>55212723
Too much money for that shit nigga

>>55212754
There's that thing in ADWD where the Shrouded Lord who rules The Sorrows "was a statue at first" until a beautiful woman came from the mists and woke him with "lips as cold as ice", and another fable that says The Shrouded Lord is the long-dead Prince Garin risen from the grave.
That whole tale sounds rather familiar, and though I'm guessing we'll get no answers to the subject there IS some creepy unnatural shit happening in The Sorrows that isn't just the greyscale.

>>55212829

Remember when Wights were portrayed as slow, dead-strong magically-powered terminators in Season 1? When you could cut their head off and the two parts will still be coming after you?

Notice how all that stuff was scribbled away with a red crayon? Dabid strikes again!

>>55212829
If you meant when they were defending on the island in the ice lake they had the proper equipment to kill them.

>>55212898
It might be a reference to dangerous things happening during ancient winter seasons, or ice-ages.

Bad shit happened then, just solely the Others. Everyone dealt with their own Long Night.

Or maybe you already knew this.

>>55212930
>not solely the Others

correction

>>55212914
He's also referencing Hardhome.

>>55212930
>Everyone dealt with their own Long Night.

You can thank the Church of Starry Wisdom for the Long Night, who had supposedly made contact with a Lovecraftian being lurking between the stars.

>>55212772
The zombies are exactly as they're described in the books, they're zombies, problem is, the Other's aren't even in the tv show, the Night King is just a worse zombie who doesn't even exist in the books. The Others, in the two times they actually showed up are described as being near invisible to the naked eye save for the broken, mirror-like illusion they have on the air and their snowy surroundings.

>>55209858
No, a maester said that that is how they reforge the steel and it works fine, no one knows how to make it

>>55212898
God that entire chapter was fucking spooky. How does a river DO that?

>>55210494
Yeah, I guess that some's good reasoning. I read into it pretty differently so it ended up always running me the wrong way.

>>55212948
If only we could believe that story. Everything makes less sense the further back you go.

Like the mysterious Fisher Queens and their flying ocean palaces.

>>55212952
Apparently that mirage effect is from their armor, which has crazy reflective properties.

>>55212955
Read it again.

>>55212955
It was never stated that was how they reforged it. It was just something they dabbled in.

The Maester got marred for discovering it.

>>55212966
>How does a river DO that?

It's the Rhoyne, anon. A river that not only nurtured the first human civilizations, but watched as those civilizations that grew up around the "Mother" were incinerated by dragonfire.

It's very, very old and very, very angry.

>>55212955
>>55209858

Qohorik blood sacrifices do not allow them to replicate Valyrian Steel, it merely allows them to craft steel ALMOST as strong as Valyrian. In many respects, you could say a Qohorik blade is the best money can reasonably buy.

>>55213036
No. The Qohor blacksmiths don't make Valyrian steel knockoffs, they know the secrets of repurposing it. Nobody knows how to duplicate Valyrian sorcery.

>>55212975
One of the things I liked about the setting was how it's basically a flat truth that nobody REALLY knows what happened back in the day, that thousands and thousands of years is just too far back and too long ago for anyone's shitty third-hand account to really be accurate anymore.
I actually think Dragon Age did that too if I'm remembering what I was told about the later games was right, that pretty much most of the history folks remember is half-wrong or sheer falsehood collectively remembered as truth by poor historians and word-of-mouth, but I never played much of the last two games in that franchise.

>>55213051
This anon is right

>>55213053
ASoIaF was an inspiration for Dragon Age. Not surprising.

>>55213053
Dragon Age went to shit after the first game much like Fable.

>>55186285
Lazy worldbuilding. Everything is just a pastiche of common fantasy tropes or pop history.

>>55213088
Inquisition is fine. The bald elf character ruined it for me though.

>>55213053
>>55213069
Anyone else find that whole book one long, drawn out pleasant surprise? I can't quite explain it, but the World of Ice and Fire genuinely made me fascinated in not only the lore, but exploring it beyond Westeros.

>>55213051
Qohorik Steel is canonically second only to Valyrian, they've got the best craftsman in Essos and, by extension, Westeros.

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>>55213088
I have no idea what you're taling about.

>>55213136
You will never see the world much further than that, sadly. Martin doesn't like to reveal much. He prefers things kept vague.

>>55213137
I forgot about the PC/SJW stance those games have. Fuck. Thanks for turning me off from it once again.

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>>55213225
Eh. Really not too big a deal. Just annoying how they shoehorn it in everywhere, like the newest mass effect.

>>55213225
>That in-game book that reveals that every country is extremely tolerant of fags
>EXCEPT for designated evil empire
>That quest when a gay guy's father from designated evil empire attempted to cure the gay with literally THE MOST EVIL MAGIC IN THE WORLD

>>55213225
>I forgot about the PC/SJW stance those games have.

It just doesn't make sense, Bioware is explicitly terrified of adding "beautiful" female characters into their games, but they're completely fine with their men being hunks.

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>>55213261
Maybe in the past, but current year Bioware replaced their hunks with cucks and manlets. Can somebody post that pic that compares Ryder's height with Shepard's?

>>55213245
This guy wasn't gay, trans, and didn't even consider himself a woman though.
He outright says he has no interest in men, he's just got a weird hobby of dressing up.

>>55213261
That's not what happened in Andromeda, contrary to paranoid internet theories.
What happened with Andromeda is years and years of development time with less then less then a year and a half of actual work being done and a developer studio with zero game development experience using a game engine that is reportedly very annoying to use and the overall director of the project changing over and over.

Basically Andromeda's ugly female characters is just part of Bioware's recent corporate shittyness and horrible mismanagement ever since EA replaced literally everyone in the company with EA stooges from other EA companies.
One guy in the games industry once said that Bioware's recent reputation for mismanagement and poor direction is so shitty that some people who work there (and they go through A LOT of workers there apparently) actually avoid putting it on their resume because it's NOT a good thing to have worked there.

SJW Boogyman is cute and all, but the explanation is the far more common and much more boring plain old greed and incompetence.

>>55213519
>a game engine that is reportedly very annoying to use
what?

>>55213519
>Basically Andromeda's ugly female characters is just part of Bioware's recent corporate shittyness and horrible mismanagement ever since EA replaced literally everyone in the company with EA stooges from other EA companies.

See, I'd believe you if literally every single other female character in every other recent (as in, post-EA) title wasn't also hideous.

>>55213534
he's talking about the Frostbite engine, the game engine Bioware has been REALLY pushing these days for use in all of their games.
Multiple folks have said that it is a tremendous pain in the ass to design games with and is the cause of tons of delays in graphics and other problems in the game development cycle over there because it's so hard to work with, and one guy even brought up the highly plausible theory that Bioware is using it because it's EA's in-house engine for Battlefield and thus they can reuse it for Dragon-Effect-Whatever games without paying other companies for licensing their engines even though the Frostbite Engine is a pain in the ass to use.

>>55197864
Sounds like complete fanwank.

>>55208148
>It's hard to picture how they would have killed such powerful users of magic.

knife in gut, that's how

>>55213773
Assuming you could even do that before you get spontaneously combusted, like Melisandre did to that warged eagle.

>>55213825
Apparently that's not something she can actually even do; she carries around explosives and flash powder and other more mundane stuff for her "flashy" magic.
Her powers strictly seem limited to glamors and prophetic shit unless she makes some kind of sacrifice as with the "seed of a king" for her shadow demons.

>>55213894
That's note quite right; she was able to do it to the warged eagle, but she says she can't blow people up or manipulate regular fire or anything like that without her "powders".
Basically I think she can stop the Warging and counter the spell because it's magic and she knows how to stop magic, but in keeping with Martin's dislike of flashy D&D-style magic she probably can't just explode random people with fire at will.
To make a stronger argument of that, she thinks to herself repeatedly that her magic is MUCH stronger up on the Wall then it would normally be otherwise.

>>55213894
No. What she did was spontaneous. No powders involved. It happened miles away.
Her 'powders' are also quite evidently magical in nature. She is no charlatan.

>>55213984
She can conjure fire with her bare hands.
Benerro, the high priest of Volantis, could do the same -and- trace letters with said fire.

>>55213984
There was no explosion. The eagle just conflagrated in a writhe of flame.

She is often underestimated, but is more than likely the most powerful magician we have seen in the series thus far.

>>55214014
>Her 'powders' are also quite evidently magical in nature. She is no charlatan.
You're mistaking my meaning; I didn't mean to imply she knew no magic because she clearly does (and I think that her true appearance in the show might be accurate in the books as well given her own inner thoughts estimation of her age and how long she's been at this), but that she's not nearly a D&D-level spellcaster or anything like it and she relies on tools as stuff to control her magic, especially that ruby.
Maintaining the illusion on Rattleshirt as he burned clearly pained her as the thing heated up until it burned her skin, so her magic isn't "easy" by any means and like a lot of magic things you need to give up something (even if it's just a bit of pain) to make it do it's thing, like how Victarion screamed in agony when his hand got burned by the fire but became stronger and freed of poison because of it.

What's that thing that one guy says in the books? "Magic is like a sword with no handle, there is no safe way to hold it?"

>>55214035
I think she's easily the most potent magic-user in the series just based on the sheer depth of what she knows.
Most sorcerers in the series seem to be limited to maybe one or two tricks, but she seems to know LOTS of them compared to everyone else.

>>55214090
I tend to agree, though magic at times has been rather vulgar and lenient in practicality. The fire-mage in Qarth being a reminder.

it's difficult, yes, but not as difficult as some readers seem to think at times.

Though again, coming from Melisandre herself
>"the more effortless the sorcery appears the more men fear the sorcerer"

>>55214160
She offered to teach Jon Snow how to work his latent Skinchanging abilities. She seems to have knowledge of magics foreign to her own..

Not that magic doesn't overlap. Skinchanging could very well be prominent in Essos as well.

>>55211391
>always eats his bacon burnt black

>>55211323
One of his eyes is described by Sansa as so dark it almost appears black. That same description is used for some Valyrian eyes in the series. It's possible it's actually a very dark purple and that people just assume it's green due to him being a Lannister without really looking at it.

That and his hair is also described as being two different colors. One of which is "so blonde it almost appears white."

>>55214703
sure, but all of aerys's legitimate kids seem to be the prettiest people alive at the time except maybe viserys who doesnt really get much description other than crazy. coincidentally these descriptions line up perfectly with the incestual fire loving twins and works better with their story than the man whose entire arc was basically an extreme case of daddy issues

>>55214260
Holy shit anon we're onto something
>>55216152
Cercei I understand, but when is it stated that Jaime loves dire?

>>55211249
i don't think this is the true anymore, what with viserion dying and all. That is, if the book follows the show in killing off one of the dragons.
It would have made sense, the whole, the dragon has three heads thing, but I think he's going to just settle on Jon and Dany

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>>55199139
>>55198950
Here you go, senpai.

>>55195122
>that was second last episode and wasn't a fast magic teleport. The were stuck on that island for at least a day, long enough for thoros to die and freeze and the lake to refreeze and freeze more solidly. they just time skipped the boring stareing constest.

You stupid son of a bitch. Some dragonlord bitch hundreds of years ago decided she'd map Sothoryos, so she took her dragon and flew south for THREE YEARS without reaching an end, so she came back and declard it was "as big as Essos".

The point being that dragons really aren't anywhere as fast as modern airplanes, especially when carrying somebody.

>>55217200
books =/= show

The showrunners have admitted that the show is massively different from the next two novels.