>True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew.

A man who was currently in the final stages of freezing to death, dies and suddenly he feels a shock of cold. Next thing he knows, he has already reincarnated into his wolf-companion.

But before that, his soul seemingly passed into the Weirwood, with his people apparently holding the belief that this is what happens to everyone after death.

Now, Varamyr as a Skinchanger (who apparently have the unique ability to have their souls temporarily leave their mortal vessels behind to do various stuff like warging), is probably a somewhat special case, being a Skinchanger who had previously broken all three tabboos might have also have had some effect. But what about the average Joe?

What do you think happens to people who believe in the Seven rather than the Old Gods, or regular followers of the Old Gods who aren't Skinchangers.

Or points at all of Essos and their various beliefs.

And what if your afterlife is (otherwise) eternal, but located in the 'real' world with a huge weakness against axe&fire? Where do all the previously accumulated souls go? Both in case of a continent-wide genocide thousands of years ago but also recently in a regional purge of the Stormlands.

What would someone like Melisandre gain from burning literal soul trees?

Where exactly where Beric's and Catelyn's souls actually retrieved from?

How are souls and necromancy linked? The Seven believe the latter to be an "abomination" and the former to be "immortal".

>The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life.
She sees me.

Those three words basically had me shitting bricks the first time I read this chapter.

It would be great on its own already but I also love how this ending fulfills Varamyr's earlier paranoia and fear about whether Thistle suspects anything regarding his 'true nature' and identity after introducing himself as "Haggon":

>“Harma’s dead and Mance is captured, the rest run off and left us,” Thistle had claimed, as she was sewing up his wound. “Tormund, the Weeper, Sixskins, all them brave raiders. Where are they now?”
She does not know me, Varamyr realized then, and why should she? Without his beasts he did not look like a great man. I was Varamyr Sixskins, who broke bread with Mance Rayder. He had named himself Varamyr when he was ten. A name fit for a lord, a name for songs, a mighty name, and fearsome. Yet he had run from the crows like a frightened rabbit. The terrible Lord Varamyr had gone craven, but he could not bear that she should know that, so he told the spearwife that his name was Haggon. Afterward he wondered why that name had come to his lips, of all those he might have chosen. I ate his heart and drank his blood, and still he haunts me.
[...]
I should have taken her before she left. How long had she been gone? Two days? Three? Varamyr was uncertain. It was dark inside the hut, and he had been drifting in and out of sleep, never quite sure if it was day or night outside. “Wait,” she’d said. “I will be back with food.” So like a fool he’d waited, dreaming of Haggon and Bump and all the wrongs he had done in his long life, but days and nights had passed and Thistle had not returned. She won’t be coming back. Varamyr wondered if he had given himself away. Could she tell what he was thinking just from looking at him, or had he muttered in his fever dream?
Abomination, he heard Haggon saying. It was almost as if he were here, in this very room.

Or the similiar kind of paranoia he felt toward his murdered little brother in his childhood:

>“Your little one is with the gods now,” the woods witch told his mother, as she wept. “He’ll never hurt again, never hunger, never cry. The gods have taken him down into the earth, into the trees. The gods are all around us, in the rocks and streams, in the birds and beasts. Your Bump has gone to join them. He’ll be the world and all that’s in it.”
The old woman’s words had gone through Lump like a knife. Bump sees. He is watching me. He knows. Lump could not hide from him, could not slip behind his mother’s skirts or run off with the dogs to escape his father’s fury.

Well, Lump has just committed another unforgivable sin right before his death:

>When they reached the crest the wolves paused. Thistle, he remembered, and a part of him grieved for what he had lost and another part for what he’d done.

But surely nobody knows that, he literally reincarnated into a wolf in-between, how could anybody ever recognize him for what he actually is?

>She sees me.

I also love how ambigious this is:

Does Thistle recognize him (which once again picks up the question of how much awareness a Wight retains)?

The Wight that previously was Thistle?

The presence/source behind its blue eyes?

>But the one-eyed wolf answered with a growl and moved to block his advance. Head. And he does not fear me though I am twice his size.
Their eyes met.
Warg!
Then the two rushed together, wolf and direwolf, and there was no more time for thought.

Or did "Thistle" not recognize Varamyr at all and merely reacted to a Warg's presence? A couple chapters later we see that Varamyr still has that effect on Skinchangers even post-reincarnation, with us repeatedly being told that they can recognize each other at a mere glance. That would have very interesting implications regarding the Others as a whole.

It was always pretty obvious that he had a certain mission in mind for Gregor when he sent him up Elia's tower but Tywin is legit receiving and reading detailed torture-reports of people like Vargo Hoat (before he even knew what happened to Jaime):

>“Did Varys mention this?” He moved closer to the fire, to let his father see.
Lord Tywin pushed himself out of his chair, breath hissing between his teeth. “Who did this? If Lady Catelyn thinks—”
“Lady Catelyn held a sword to my throat and made me swear to return her daughters. This was your goat’s work. Vargo Hoat, the Lord of Harrenhal!”
Lord Tywin looked away, disgusted. “No longer. Ser Gregor’s taken the castle. The sellswords deserted their erstwhile captain almost to a man, and some of Lady Whent’s old people opened a postern gate. Clegane found Hoat sitting alone in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, half-mad with pain and fever from a wound that festered. His ear, I’m told.”
Jaime had to laugh. Too sweet! His ear! He could scarcely wait to tell Brienne, though the wench wouldn’t find it half so funny as he did. “Is he dead yet?”
“Soon. They have taken off his hands and feet, but Clegane seems amused by the way the Qohorik slobbers.”
Jaime’s smile curdled. “What about his Brave Companions?”

"They have taken off his hands and feet, but Clegane seems amused by the way the Qohorik slobbers."

The fact that Tywin is interested in Gregor's musings regarding the people he tortures makes him even more insane(ly pathetic) in my mind than he already was.

>Oh, and Hoat. I was distraught to hear that he had died. I’d like to look upon his head.”
When they brought it to him, he found that the Goat’s lips had been sliced off, along with his ears and most of his nose. The crows had supped upon his eyes. It was still recognizably Hoat, however. Jaime would have known his beard anywhere; an absurd rope of hair two feet long, dangling from a pointed chin. Elsewise, only a few leathery strips of flesh still clung to the Qohorik’s skull. “Where is the rest of him?” he asked. No one wanted to tell him. Finally, Shitmouth lowered his eyes, and muttered, “Rotted, ser. And et.”
“One of the captives was always begging food,” Rafford admitted, “so Ser said to give him roast goat. The Qohorik didn’t have much meat on him, though. Ser took his hands and feet first, then his arms and legs.”
“The fat bugger got most, m’lord,” Shitmouth offered, “but Ser, he said to see that all the captives had a taste. And Hoat too, his own self. That whoreson ’ud slobber when we fed him, and the grease’d run down into that skinny beard o’ his.”
Father, Jaime thought, your dogs have both gone mad.

If he could write, this mfer Tywin would probably get his reports directly from Shitmouth.

This may seem like a minor detail but the fact that Tywin is aware of the Mountain's degeneracy to the point where he recognizes Hoat's name as the guy with no hands and feet who always "slobbers" is crazy to me lmao

"the fat bugger" who got most of the roast goat was Wylis Manderly btw, was Tywin aware of that one as well?

>The other captives had been better treated. Ser Wylis Manderly was amongst them, along with several other highborn northmen taken prisoner by the Mountain That Rides in the fighting at the fords of the Trident. Useful hostages, all worth a goodly ransom. They were ragged, filthy, and shaggy to a man, and some had fresh bruises, cracked teeth, and missing fingers, but their wounds had been washed and bandaged, and none of them had gone hungry. Jaime wondered if they had any inkling what they’d been eating, and decided it was better not to inquire.
None had any defiance left; especially not Ser Wylis, a bushy-faced tub of suet with dull eyes and sallow, sagging jowls. When Jaime told him that he would be escorted to Maidenpool and there put on a ship for White Harbor, Ser Wylis collapsed into a puddle on the floor and sobbed longer and louder than Pia had. It took four men to lift him back onto his feet. Too much roast goat, Jaime reflected. Gods, but I hate this bloody castle. Harrenhal had seen more horror in its three hundred years than Casterly Rock had witnessed in three thousand.

Force fed into becoming a cannibal (+who knows what else), and "Sobbed longer and louder than Pia had."

>"I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter … but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.”
Something about the way Lord Wyman said that chilled Davos to the bone.

Yeah, Lord Wyman probably wasn't too happy about the treatment his only living son received by his gracious hosts at Harrenhall.

>"Where are my kin, Manderly? Tell me that. Your guests, who brought your son back to you.”
“His bones, you mean.” Manderly speared a chunk of ham with his dagger. “I recall them well. Rhaegar of the round shoulders, with his glib tongue. Bold Ser Jared, so swift to draw his steel. Symond the spymaster, always clinking coins. They brought home Wendel’s bones. It was Tywin Lannister who returned Wylis to me, safe and whole, as he had promised. A man of his word, Lord Tywin, Seven save his soul.”

Not happy at all.

But I mean the Mountain was annoyed by that one guy slobbering and all that meat had to go somewhere right? So did Tywin decide to do some trolling and planned to deliver Wylis "safe and whole (but only physically lol)"? This little maneuver is gonna cost the Lannisters an entire cannibalism-themed rebellion brewing in the North.

Either way, may the Seven save his soul I guess.

>Then all at once he was back home again.
Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man’s gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard’s lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.
“Winterfell,” Bran whispered.
His father looked up. “Who’s there?” he asked, turning …
… and Bran, frightened, pulled away. His father and the black pool and the godswood faded and were gone and he was back in the cavern, the pale thick roots of his weirwood throne cradling his limbs as a mother does a child.
[...]
“But,” said Bran, “he heard me.”
“He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.”

Bloodraven describes it as "a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves", but whatever Ned heard, it took him from a solemn state of contemplation all by his lonesome, to instantly turning his head and asking "Who's there?" when Bran first "whispers" to him.

>… but then somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the godswood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it, his head bowed. “… let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them,” he prayed, “and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive …”
“Father.” Bran’s voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. “Father, it’s me. It’s Bran. Brandon.”
Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing.
He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he could do was watch and listen. I am in the tree. I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t.
Eddard Stark resumed his prayer. Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood’s? If I cry, will the tree begin to weep?
The rest of his father’s words were drowned out by a sudden clatter of wood on wood. Eddard Stark dissolved, like mist in a morning sun.

Once again, Ned is in the middle of a prayer and he is seemingly interrupted by Bran's presence and his favorite tree trynna tell him that it's Brandon while calling him "Father.", to which he reacts to with a long, "frowning" look, before then resuming his prayer.

So even since before Bran was actually born (the second scene is clearly soon after the war and Robb's/Jon's birth), he has been trying to communicate with Ned through the Godswood in Winterfell. This may or may not have been, chronologically, the first time Bran has tried to contact Ned but what's interesting to me is that, from Bran's perspective, the first time he saw and tried to talk to his father was most likely soon before or just after the beginning of AGOT.

Bran immediately recognizes his father and "Winterfell" as he knows them and Bloodraven told him he went wherever "home" was.

So not only is it unclear at which points or how often the "trees" have tried to talk to Ned (with the conciousness inhabiting them being a chronlogically confused being seeing through "shadows" and "mists" of memories), we also don't really know what Ned is actually hearing in his own POV.

>“But,” said Bran, “he heard me.”
“He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran.

But we do get a POV of two different characters when Bran is whispering to them, Jon/Ghost and Summer:

>Many a time his brother had tried to crack the black bones of the gate between his teeth, but they would not break. They had tried to dig under, but there were great flat stones beneath, half-covered by earth and blown leaves.
Snarling, he paced back and forth in front of the gate, then threw himself at it once more. It moved a little and slammed him back. Locked, something whispered. Chained. The voice he did not hear, the scent without a smell. The other ways were closed as well. Where doors opened in the walls of man-rock, the wood was thick and strong. There was no way out.
There is, the whisper came, and it seemed as if he could see the shadow of a great tree covered in needles, slanting up out of the black earth to ten times the height of a man. Yet when he looked about, it was not there. The other side of the godswood, the sentinel, hurry, hurry …
//
He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow.
Jon?
The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only …
A weirwood.
[...]
Had his brother always had three eyes?
Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

Both Summer and Ghost/Jon perceive Bran as a tree whispering to them, but Ghost/Jon compare it more to something like a "silent shout".

>“Winterfell,” Bran whispered.
His father looked up. “Who’s there?” he asked, turning …
//
Jon?
The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother,

Ned probably thinks he must be crazy.c

>Behind the trees the walls rose, piles of dead man-rock that loomed all about this speck of living wood. Speckled grey they rose, and moss-spotted, yet thick and strong and higher than any wolf could hope to leap. Cold iron and splintery wood closed off the only holes through the piled stones that hemmed them in. His brother would stop at every hole and bare his fangs in rage, but the ways stayed closed.
He had done the same the first night, and learned that it was no good. Snarls would open no paths here. Circling the walls would not push them back. Lifting a leg and marking the trees would keep no men away. The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him suddenly. Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die.
- A Clash of Kings, Chapter 4

...

>Snarling, he paced back and forth in front of the gate, then threw himself at it once more. It moved a little and slammed him back. Locked, something whispered. Chained. The voice he did not hear, the scent without a smell. The other ways were closed as well. Where doors opened in the walls of man-rock, the wood was thick and strong. There was no way out.
There is, the whisper came, and it seemed as if he could see the shadow of a great tree covered in needles, slanting up out of the black earth to ten times the height of a man. Yet when he looked about, it was not there. The other side of the godswood, the sentinel, hurry, hurry …
- A Clash of Kings, Chapter 46

Like when Varamyr is warging into his wolves, seemingly neither them nor he himself are 'truly conscious', but instead the wolves perceive their Warg as a "silent voice" guiding them:

>Flesh, the warg thought, meat.
A man alone was a feeble thing. Big and strong, with good sharp eyes, but dull of ear and deaf to smells. Deer and elk and even hares were faster, bears and boars fiercer in a fight. But men in packs were dangerous. As the wolves closed on the prey, the warg heard the wailing of a pup, the crust of last night’s snow breaking under clumsy man-paws, the rattle of hardskins and the long grey claws men carried.
Swords, a voice inside him whispered, spears.
The trees had grown icy teeth, snarling down from the bare brown branches. One Eye ripped through the undergrowth, spraying snow. His packmates followed. Up a hill and down the slope beyond, until the wood opened before them and the men were there. One was female. The fur-wrapped bundle she clutched was her pup. Leave her for last, the voice whispered, the males are the danger. They were roaring at each other as men did, but the warg could smell their terror. One had a wooden tooth as tall as he was. He flung it, but his hand was shaking and the tooth sailed high.
Then the pack was on them.
- A Dance with Dragons, Prologue

I find Summer's thoughts regarding mankind locking him away particularly interesting, I believe it's the first time Bran is actively warging as well and he doesn't even have his "voice" yet, so these thoughts are likely mostly pure instinct on Summer's part and how he currently feels about mankind except probably Bran at that point, which I think could relate to something Leaf predicts much later on in the books:

>Lifting a leg and marking the trees would keep no men away. The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him suddenly. Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die.
//
"Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

Also the way (dire)wolves perceive things like man-made weapons and walls as "man-cliffs" or "wooden tooth", with "the rattle of hardskins" likely being leather and "long grey claws men carried" being swords and spears is also a really cool detail.

>It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to return to Winterfell, to the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies were winter and the wildlings beyond the Wall. “Surely Robert has other loyal friends,” he protested. “His brothers, his—”
“—wife?” Varys finished, with a smile that cut. “His brothers hate the Lannisters, true enough, but hating the queen and loving the king are not quite the same thing, are they? Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger.”
“The Kingsguard—”
“A paper shield,” the eunuch said.
- AGOT, Chapter 30

...

>Ned produced Robert’s letter. “Lord Varys, be so kind as to show this to my lady of Lannister.”
The eunuch carried the letter to Cersei. The queen glanced at the words. “Protector of the Realm,” she read. “Is this meant to be your shield, my lord? A piece of paper?” She ripped the letter in half, ripped the halves in quarters, and let the pieces flutter to the floor.
“Those were the king’s words,” Ser Barristan said, shocked.
“We have a new king now,” Cersei Lannister replied.
- AGOT, Chapter 49

>That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word, but a castle has no secrets, and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard from the lips of her husband’s soldiers. They whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys’s Kingsguard, and of how their young lord had slain him in single combat. And they told how afterward Ned had carried Ser Arthur’s sword back to the beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called Starfall on the shores of the Summer Sea. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting violet eyes. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. “Never ask me about Jon,” he said, cold as ice. “He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady.” She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne’s name was never heard in Winterfell again.
[...]
“Honor,” she spat. “How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You’ve a bastard of your own, I’ve seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I’m told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?”
[...]
Arya was the only one to show much of Ned in her features. And Jon Snow, but he was never mine. She found herself thinking of Jon’s mother, that shadowy secret love her husband would never speak of. Does she grieve for Ned as I do? Or did she hate him for leaving her bed for mine? Does she pray for her son as I have prayed for mine?
They were uncomfortable thoughts, and futile. If Jon had been born of Ashara Dayne of Starfall, as some whispered, the lady was long dead; if not, Catelyn had no clue who or where his mother might be.

In-universe, anyone who ever suspects that Jon's mother was someone 'special' to Ned, the first and only suspect is pretty much always Ashara Dayne.

Privately, whenever "one of his boys" asks him (which could be made up entirely of only Robert), Ned tells them that:

>“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”

Now, if anyone obsessed enough with gossip would ever try to find the truth of the matter, Household Dayne will them this:

>“How do you know about Jon?”
“He is my milk brother.”
“Brother?” Arya did not understand. “But you’re from Dorne. How could you and Jon be blood?”
“Milk brothers. Not blood. My lady mother had no milk when I was little, so Wylla had to nurse me.”
Arya was lost. “Who’s Wylla?”
“Jon Snow’s mother. He never told you? She’s served us for years and years. Since before I was born.”

Obviously, Jon's mother is not Ashara Dayne, it happens to be a lowborn woman named Wylla... who was serving in Ashara Dayne's household.

Oh, Ned "never told" his family? That's funny, why would Ned try to hide the fact that this supposed "Wylla" (whom everyone such as Robert would probably assume is a made up name anyways because clearly he doesn't wanna talk about it), was actually real and part of the Dayne household?

Because obviously, Ashara is Jon's mother.

Right?

I recently read an interpretation that was vastly different from mine, so I'm curious what people think about Dany's mantra.

So I was just reading through some of Dany's AGOT chapters, and that whole arc including Mirri's ritual leading to one of the more confusing dream sequences, which then leads to a third and final chapter of the book where Dany revives three Dragons by burning Mirri on a pyre (among others), are a very chaotic sequence of events, especially when reading it the first time.

However, this time a certain line during these events suddenly stood out to me among all the others:

>She threw open the door.
“… the dragon …”
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.

Dany is being chased by a "Darkness", eventually she takes flight and throws open the metaphorical door, the one she always dreamed about reaching one day, and behind it she only finds "the last dragon", which turns out to be her own face hiding behind a black visor.

I'm not gonna interpret anything here because that's not what the post is about, but after one very hectic dream sequence, Dany then essentially dreams of pain and burning from within, while the stars are whispering things to her "for a long time", which I guess represents the length of her coma.

>And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her. “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.”
Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.

The same chapter also ends with the darkness from her dream now taunting her even when she is awake, and she doesn't want to dream at all anymore.

>She dreamed. All her cares fell away from her, and all her pains as well, and she seemed to float upward into the sky. She was flying once again, spinning, laughing, dancing, as the stars wheeled around her and whispered secrets in her ear. “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
“Quaithe?” Dany called. “Where are you, Quaithe?”
Then she saw. Her mask is made of starlight.
“Remember who you are, Daenerys,” the stars whispered in a woman’s voice. “The dragons know. Do you?”

So this time I actually knew that there is a woman made of starlight, who tries to get Dany to embrace "the dragon" during another fever dream while the stars are "whispering" secrets to her several books later, and her name is Quaithe.

Why do the stars show up, and suddenly intensify by a lot, both times when Dany is literally at rock bottom?

>“Do it,” Dany blurted. She must not be afraid; she was the blood of the dragon. “Save him.”
“There is a price,” the godswife warned her.
“You’ll have gold, horses, whatever you like.”
“It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for life.”

Mirri explains the concept of bloodmagic with the phrase "Only death may pay for life."

>“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life.” Mirri Maz Duur opened her mouth, but made no reply. As she stepped away, Dany saw that the contempt was gone from the maegi’s flat black eyes; in its place was something that might have been fear.
[...]
Only death can pay for life.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder,

Dany chants the bloodmagic-slogan in her head right as the second stone egg cracks open, earlier she tells Mirri that she plans to sacrifice her on that pyre as well. Mirri, Drogo, (possibly Rhaego's spirit or 'essence'), and finally herself, Dany pretty much stacked a bunch of kings' blood on top of a powerful Maegi in a magical super-ritual that somehow ended up resurrecting three dragons from stone.

>Melisandre moved closer. “Save them, sire. Let me wake the stone dragons. Three is three. Give me the boy.”
“Edric Storm,” Davos said.
[...]
“None of these was the chosen of R’hllor. No red comet blazed across the heavens to herald their coming. None wielded Lightbringer, the red sword of heroes. And none of them paid the price. Lady Melisandre will tell you, my lord. Only death can pay for life.”
“The boy?” The king almost spat the words.
“The boy,” agreed the queen.
“The boy,” Ser Axell echoed.
[...]
“I am a small man,” Davos admitted, “so tell me why you need this boy Edric Storm to wake your great stone dragon, my lady.” He was determined to say the boy’s name as often as he could.
“Only death can pay for life, my lord. A great gift requires a great sacrifice.”
“Where is the greatness in a baseborn child?”
“He has kings’ blood in his veins. You have seen what even a little of that blood could do—”

... but that's exactly how Melisandre plans to get Stannis his three stone dragons.

>Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen’s men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. “There is power in a king’s blood,” the old maester had warned, “and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this.”

According to a rumor Jon hears, Melisandre apparently also originally planned to have both Mance and his son burned, "the father first and then the son, so both die kings." to achieve this 'ressurection' or summoning of stone dragons.

Does she ever give any actual details on this?

>The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”

>Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they had shared over her passing.
This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper.
- AGOT, Chapter 12

The murder of Elia's children causes a "cold rage" within Ned, which he dealt with by blindly plunging himself into whatever battle willing to be fought.

>“You’d be dead if I had. You ought to thank me. You ought to sing me a pretty little song, the way your sister did.”
“Did you hit her with an axe too?”
“I hit you with the flat of the axe, you stupid little bitch. If I’d hit you with the blade there’d still be chunks of your head floating down the Green Fork. Now shut your bloody mouth. If I had any sense I’d give you to the silent sisters. They cut the tongues out of girls who talk too much.”
That wasn’t fair of him to say. Aside from that one time, Arya hardly talked at all. Whole days passed when neither of them said anything. She was too empty to talk, and the Hound was too angry. She could feel the fury in him; she could see it on his face, the way his mouth would tighten and twist, the looks he gave her. Whenever he took his axe to chop some wood for a fire, he would slide into a cold rage, hacking savagely at the tree or the deadfall or the broken limb, until they had twenty times as much kindling and firewood as they’d needed. Sometimes he would be so sore and tired afterward that he would lie down and go right to sleep without even lighting a fire. Arya hated it when that happened, and hated him too. Those were the nights when she stared the longest at the axe. It looks awfully heavy, but I bet I could swing it. She wouldn’t hit him with the flat, either.
- ASOS, Chapter 65

The Hound deals with his "cold rage" by fighting shadows in the woods, he savagely hacks his axe through entire stretches of forest until he is so tired that he can't/doesn't even bother to light any of it on fire.

>Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life’s blood.
When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.
When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.
- AGOT, Chapter 58

Ned doesn't react to the image of Cersei mocking him about her victory with anger, why not? Possible because he doesn't fault her for doing everything to protect her children or because he would have done the same in her position?

The thought of his (presumably captured) daugthers however, fills Ned with a grief that freezes into hard rage. As if being so angry that you can't even cry is some kind of curse on the Starks.

>Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be here too soon for Ned’s liking. He had only to look at Sansa’s face to feel the rage twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.
- AGOT, Chapter 20

Earlier in Book 1, Ned thinks about both his daugthers, and then dreams about "a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell".

>When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him. When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.

When Ned is stuck in the Black Cells later on, he thinks about his two daugthers in a cold/frozen rage and then he loses all concept of time for a while, stuck in this agonizing loop.

Ned is now literally stuck in "a frozen hell reserved for the Starks" that he dreamed about earlier.

I think (but might misremember) that this trait also shows up in Jon but worded slightly differently, "cold rage" only appears the previously mentioned two instances however.

>“Your Grace,” he said. “I am not worthy of the honor.”
Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted to honor you, I’d let you retire. I am planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and drink and wench myself into an early grave.” He slapped his gut and grinned. “You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?”
Ned knew the saying. “What the king dreams,” he said, “the Hand builds.”
“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes the shit.” He threw back his head and roared his laughter. The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes upraised. “Damn it, Ned,” the king complained. “You might at least humor me with a smile.”
- AGOT, Chapter 4

What does Robert usually dream about when he and Ned first meet after so many years?

>When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor.
“In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves.”
There was nothing Ned could say to that.
- AGOT, Chapter 4

It really keeps him up at night, you can't really fight someone you can't actually hit, after all:

>The rage was gone from him now; in his eyes Ned saw something sad and scared. “I should not have hit her. That was not … that was not kingly.” He stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. “I was always strong … no one could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can’t hit them?” Confused, the king shook his head. “Rhaegar … Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her.”
AGOT, Chapter 39

And finally at Robert's death:

>He bid his brother Renly and Grand Maester Pycelle to stand in witness as he pressed his seal into the hot yellow wax that Ned had dripped upon his letter. “Now give me something for the pain and let me die.”
Hurriedly Grand Maester Pycelle mixed him another draught of the milk of the poppy. This time the king drank deeply. His black beard was beaded with thick white droplets when he threw the empty cup aside.
“Will I dream?”
Ned gave him his answer. “You will, my lord.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. “I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my children for me.”
The words twisted in Ned’s belly like a knife. For a moment he was at a loss. He could not bring himself to lie. Then he remembered the bastards: little Barra at her mother’s breast, Mya in the Vale, Gendry at his forge, and all the others. “I shall … guard your children as if they were my own,” he said slowly.
Robert nodded and closed his eyes. Ned watched his old friend sag softly into the pillows as the milk of the poppy washed the pain from his face. Sleep took him.
- AGOT, Chapter 47

“What the king dreams,” he said, “the Hand builds.”

One of many aspects of the Protagonist is that he is (ideally) a protector and a pack-leader (like that whole speech from the Mobster about packs and alphas but without being a total piece of shit like him).

People come to your house with various problems or issues in life (some are running, some seek shelter, some seek human connection or hope, etc) and you give them patronage, you create your own pack. In a more vulgar sense, you have the biggest uh stick, around. People seeking shelter in your House like mentioning that the protag "packs heat".

The player character is a total loner/hermit who doesn't like hanging around people, but because of the pale visitor, every "homeowner with a gun" can't totally isolate themselves like the huntsman, who built (metaphorically and literally) a total "fortress" around him... until the not-yet-pale visitor came pleading for help and was rejected, presumably died as a result, and then rose as a Visitor who punishes homeowners like the huntsman, those who reject the people seeking their help/protection in these anxious times.

The Mobster was a dumb caricature "let's just cull all the weaklings in front of the others to send a message for no reason lol", but he wasn't totally wrong. One guest calls the Visitors wolves in sheep's clothing, but so are some of the human characters, they need to be culled from the pack one way or the other.

Either they leave, you have to intimidate them into doing so or it escalates into violence.

Like some people just wanna scam you "fr fr" and need to be told to gtfo

So what's FEMA?

The protag has deep trauma because his father mistreated those under his protection and he feels guilty for not standing up for his mother, even though he was even more defenseless than her in such a situation.

So an obvious "good guy" path presents itself by taking people in, treating them well (but always keeping an eye out for the wolves in sheep's clothing) and dealing with aggressors as is required but not becoming cruel and losing your humanity in the process (like the Mobster who couldn't hold together his own pack "I used to run these streets, etc..."), or the player's father. The uh mother of his child, reveals a deeply insecure side to him that he's afraid of ending up as a "carbon-copy" of his father.

With meta knowledge and playing an inquisitive protag with an eagle-eye, you can hold your pack together and weather your homestead through the storm pretty well against most dangers while not becoming like your father or the Mobster, but you cannot protect people from FEMA.

There is this whole juggling mechanic where you are forced to constantly feed orphans into the orphan crushing machine for no reason at all other than: "I'm just following orders and so better do you".

"Hey, I just need two final guys to vivisect anyways, if we haven't stopped it by then, we'll be wiped out anyways lol"... "for real though, don't forget that you have no choice either ways because we are the ones with an even bigger gun than yours"

You can shelter a wounded man from the crazy-ass Vigilante, but when the guys in the yellow suits show up, there is no negotiation. Even the pale visitor negotiates with you, kinda.

Is the Mobster right, is there always one bigger Alpha out there somewhere who fucks over everyone else and they just have to take it? Cost of doing business as it were?

Like if you get bullied at school and have to pay up your lunch money to a bigger kid with the teachers not giving af, or on a more extreme scale, being a victim of cartel violence somewhere else in the world where all the cops are on the take.

Or more relatable, the tax man.

I know the game has many different interpreations and perspectives into different topics depending on what lens you look at it with, so what do you think is FEMA's role through the lense of the player character embodying the privileged homeowner and head of a "found family" they need to shelter and protect (as well as themselves)?