>“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)?

>"Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You call me maegi as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You are a child, with a child’s ignorance."
- AGOT, Chapter 72

In Dany's last chapter of AGOT, Mirri Maz Duur teaches that the word "maegi" translates to "wise", and I wanted to collect some instances across the books which, I think, tie into this 'reveal' from the first book, because while the word "maegi" only appears a single time in the story outside of Dany's POV, the phrase "wise man/woman" appears quite a few times in regards to magic/sorcery on the western continent.

>It was Dalla who answered him, Dalla great with child, lying on her pile of furs beside the brazier. “We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”
[...]
“But once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “what will stop the Others?”
Mance gave her a fond smile. “It’s a wise woman I’ve found. A true queen.”
- ASOS, Chapter 73

Dalla gives Jon a short lesson regarding magic and is part of this negotiation between Jon and Mance in regards to the free folk's magic horn that can supposedly bring down the Wall, and at another point in the conversation, Mance responds that he has married "a wise woman".

>She has power. The thought came unbidden, seizing him with iron teeth, but this was not a woman he cared to be indebted to, not even for his little sister. “Dalla told me something once. Val’s sister, Mance Rayder’s wife. She said that sorcery was a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”
“A wise woman.”
- ADWD, Chapter 28

When Melisandre offers Jon "power" in the form of magic two books later, Jon recounts his earlier lesson from Dalla, and Mel simply responds with: "A wise woman."

>Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know.
- AGOT, Chapter 66

In one of Luwin's history lessons from Book 1 (which happens even earlier than the maegi=wise reveal), he recounts that the COTF's greenseers were called "wise men".

>“You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember.”
“Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers.”
“Was it magic?”
“Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge.”
- ACOK, Chapter 28

Bran brings up this earlier history lesson once more a book later and Luwin confirms that even in Westeros, the word "wise" is also inherently connected to the concept of magic in certain context, and that magic is "only a different sort of knowledge", aka the "higher mysteries".

An interesting conversation about the relationship between the Citadel, conventional wisdom and magic:

>“What are these glass candles?” asked Roone.
Armen the Acolyte cleared his throat. “The night before an acolyte says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern is permitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper … only a candle of obsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light that candle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who have made a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut their fingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors. Then, with bloody hands, they must wait upon the dawn, brooding on their failure. Wiser men simply go to sleep, or spend their night in prayer, but every year there are always a few who must try.”
“Yes.” Pate had heard the same stories. “But what’s the use of a candle that casts no light?”
“It is a lesson,” Armen said, “the last lesson we must learn before we don our maester’s chains. The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn … for even with knowledge, some things are not possible.”
- AFFC, Prologue

Because magic is and has been as good as dead south of the Wall for many years now, the whole Glass Candle thing is essentially a humiliation ritual for young Maesters who still somewhat believe in magic, because "Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well."

>Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer.
- ADWD, Chapter 34

Bran kinda outs all the "woods witches" as children of the forest here, I think. He basically calls the children/singers "little magic people of the forest", and that's pretty much the most accurate description for all these little woods witches that keep popping up in the books.

>“This dream concerned a witch woman I visited as a child.”
“A woods witch? Most are harmless creatures. They know a little herb-craft and some midwifery, but elsewise …”
“She was more than that. Half of Lannisport used to go to her for charms and potions. She was mother to a petty lord, a wealthy merchant upjumped by my grandsire. This lord’s father had found her whilst trading in the east. Some say she cast a spell on him, though more like the only charm she needed was the one between her thighs. She was not always hideous, or so they said. I don’t recall the woman’s name. Something long and eastern and outlandish. The smallfolk used to call her Maggy.”
“Maegi?”
“Is that how you say it? The woman would suck a drop of blood from your finger, and tell you what your morrows held.”
“Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery. Some say it is the most powerful as well.”
Cersei did not want to hear that. [I absolutely love how she really does never bring up or even think again about the whole bloodmagic thing lmao, classic Cersei.]
- AFFC, Chapter 36

This is the only instance where the word "Maegi" appears outside of Dany's POV which I mentioned earlier. I think it's pretty safe to say that Maggy is not a woods witch, but an actual Maegi from the far east, capable of bloodmagic just like Mirri Maz Duur was, both also have very long names that sound outlandish to people speaking the Common Tongue of Westeros, which is presumably why this woman had all the backwater people from Lannisport simply refer to her as "Maegi".

>“By itself, the blood is nothing. You do not have the words to make a spell, nor the wisdom to find them. Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You call me maegi as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You are a child, with a child’s ignorance.

The line from Dany's chapter "Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children?" probably also ties into Cersei's dream/flashback of an ignorant child-self seeking out Maggy the Frog and pressuring her friends into playing with bloodmagic, thinking that it was all just some game.

>“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 white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood, and everything that’s in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for One Eye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself.
That was his last thought as a man.
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.
- ADWD, Prologue

and:

>“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood.”
[...]
“Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth’s wing, and past, present, and future are one.
- ADWD, Chapter 34 (Bran)

So, A Dance with Dragons not only confirms that the (human) soul is real but also that for COTF and Skinchangers (and perhaps regular humans), death is not the end of its POV, and there is at least one possible Afterlife confirmed to exist in ASOIAF: Weirwoods. You (possibly) go into em' when you die.

If left undisturbed, they are seemingly eternal. And they can magically store souls inside them. That's pretty Afterlife-y. However, most of these (otherwise) eternal soul-trees on Westeros have been violently removed through Bronze/Iron or Fire, by various human invaders across the ages who tried to wipe out the COTF (and then eventually the First Men allied to them).

What do you think happened to all the souls inside those trees?

>The caves were timeless, vast, silent. They were home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extended far below the hollow hill. “Men should not go wandering in this place,” Leaf warned them. “The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea.
[...]
Deep snows crown the northern Bones, whilst sandstorms oft scour the peaks and valleys of their southern sisters, carving them into strange shapes. In the long leagues between, thundering rivers roar through deep canyons, and small caves open onto vast caverns and sunless seas.

Do they dwell in those "sunless seas" deep below the earth?

>Obsidian,” Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. “Forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian.”

Are they now trapped "in the fires of the gods, far below the earth"?

>“I will tell him, Your Grace,” said Septa Unella. “His High Holiness will be most pleased. Only through confession and true repentance may our immortal souls be saved.”
[...]
“You may wash later if His High Holiness allows,” said Septa Unella. “It is the cleanliness of your immortal soul that should concern you now, not such vanities of the flesh.”

Or perhaps the soul is not immortal after all and they simply went poof?

Something else entirely?

>ACCORDING TO THE most well-regarded accounts from the Citadel, anywhere from eight thousand to twelve thousand years ago, in the southernmost reaches of Westeros, a new people crossed the strip of land that bridged the narrow sea and connected the eastern lands with the land in which the children and giants lived. It was here that the First Men came into Dorne via the Broken Arm, which was not yet broken. Why these people left their homelands is lost to all knowing, but when they came, they came in force. Thousands entered and began to settle the lands, and as the decades passed, they pushed farther and farther north. Such tales as we have of those migratory days are not to be trusted, for they suggest that, within a few short years, the First Men had moved beyond the Neck and into the North. Yet, in truth, it would have taken decades, even centuries, for this to occur.
- The World of Ice&Fire

The oldest known time period is the "Dawn Age", with Maester Yandel suggesting that civilization first spread from the Far East and even further, Ulthos, across Essos. Then, supposedly 8000-12000 years ago, the "First Men" a civilization from Essos, first spread onto the continent Westeros where they came into conflict with a magical non-human race, the Children of the Forest.

We don't really know if the Eastern Continent in the Dawn Age was as fractured as Westeros would become eventually as the land of "100 warring kingdoms", or maybe if the myths of a great empire of the dawn are to be believed and mankind used to be more united back in the day, but eventually a society of humans speaking the Old Tongue, for unkown reasons, started venturing westwards in force. Were they running from something? Nobody knows.

In Westeros, the culture, language and history of the Old Tongue and the First Men has been almost entirely lost over the centuries/millenia, but what about the place where they actually came from? Do the books ever hint at any First Men ruins or traces of their society on Essos?

As a rather new fan of the series, I was a bit surprised to see that TWOIF's far-eastern account of the Long Night, for the most part, seems to be either treated as gospel or utterly dismissed by a lot of fans.

The main argument for the latter I've seen is that it doesn't really connect to (or is brought up at all in) the main story, and that it seemingly isn't related to the threat of the Others.

While I agree with the second argument for the most part, there are some solid and some less solid backdoor-connections to the main series which I think some people might have missed.

For one, while the Empire of Yi Ti is mostly mentioned as a rich and far-off realm close to Asshai in the main series, we actually only ever learn one detail about its people, when Dany meets a couple of traders from Yi Ti at Vaes Dothrak's markets:

>Dany liked the strangeness of the Eastern Market too, with all its queer sights and sounds and smells. She often spent her mornings there, nibbling tree eggs, locust pie, and green noodles, listening to the high ululating voices of the spellsingers, gaping at manticores in silver cages and immense grey elephants and the striped black-and-white horses of the Jogos Nhai. She enjoyed watching all the people too: dark solemn Asshai’i and tall pale Qartheen, the bright-eyed men of Yi Ti in monkey-tail hats, warrior maids from Bayasabhad, Shamyriana, and Kayakayanaya with iron rings in their nipples and rubies in their cheeks, even the dour and frightening Shadow Men, who covered their arms and legs and chests with tattoos and hid their faces behind masks. The Eastern Market was a place of wonder and magic for Dany.
[...]
A huge eunuch guarded her stall, mute and hairless, dressed in sweat-stained velvets and scowling at anyone who came close. Across the aisle, a fat cloth trader from Yi Ti was haggling with a Pentoshi over the price of some green dye, the monkey tail on his hat swaying back and forth as he shook his head.
- AGOT, Chapter 54 (Dany)

For some reason, traders from Yi Ti place some cultural significance on wearing monkey tails on their hats. Fun fact, this whole paragraph from Book 1 alone is responsible for spawning several chapters in The World of Ice&Fire, like about the Jogos Nhai and their Moon Singers, or the Warrior-Maidens from the three legendary fortress cities.

>It is also written that there are annals in Asshai of such a darkness, and of a hero who fought against it with a red sword. His deeds are said to have been performed before the rise of Valyria, in the earliest age when Old Ghis was first forming its empire. This legend has spread west from Asshai, and the followers of R’hllor claim that this hero was named Azor Ahai, and prophesy his return. In the Jade Compendium, Colloquo Votar recounts a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey’s tail.

Essentially, the people of Yi Ti still seem to honor and revere their monkey-tail-messiah-figure that saved them from the Long Night, despite the predecessor-Empire of the Dawn which they believe in having been shattered forever in the process.

Much more importantly however, in this chapter about the Long Night itself, Yandel teases the version of Yi Ti's Long Night which comes up in the Empire's own chapter much later in the book, where this shameful act is further described as the "Blood Betrayal", and he also mentions that this version of the Long Night comes from the writings of Colloquo Votar's Jade Compendium.

So all that waffling about the Bloodstone Emperor, the Dawn Empire's sun goddess Maiden-of-Light turning her back on humanity because of his shameful Blood Betrayal triggering the Long Night, and the wrath of its personified god of death the Lion of Night, is actually in the hands of Jon Snow in the form of Colloquo Votar's writings which are famous within scholar-circles:

>He had to get down on his knees to gather up the books he’d dropped. I should not have brought so many, he told himself as he brushed the dirt off Colloquo Votar’s Jade Compendium, a thick volume of tales and legends from the east that Maester Aemon had commanded him to find. The book appeared undamaged. Maester Thomax’s Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons had not been so fortunate. It had come open as it fell, and a few pages had gotten muddy, including one with a rather nice picture of Balerion the Black Dread done in colored inks.
[...]
By the time they got the maester into the wayn, Gilly had appeared, the child bundled in her arms. Beneath her hood her eyes were red from crying. Jon turned up at the same time, with Dolorous Edd. “Lord Snow,” Maester Aemon called, “I left a book for you in my chambers. The Jade Compendium. It was written by the Volantene adventurer Colloquo Votar, who traveled to the east and visited all the lands of the Jade Sea. There is a passage you may find of interest. I’ve told Clydas to mark it for you.”
“I’ll be sure to read it,” Jon Snow replied.
[...]
“Lord Snow,” Maester Aemon called out, “I left a book for you in my chambers. The Jade Compendium. It was written by the Volantene adventurer Colloquo Votar, who traveled to the east and visited all the lands of the Jade Sea. There is a passage you may find of interest. I’ve told Clydas to mark it for you.”
“I’ll be sure to read it.”
Maester Aemon wiped his nose. “Knowledge is a weapon, Jon. Arm yourself well before you ride forth to battle.”
“I will.”
[...]
“His Grace is not an easy man. Few are, who wear a crown. Many good men have been bad kings, Maester Aemon used to say, and some bad men have been good kings.”
“He would know.” Aemon Targaryen had seen nine kings upon the Iron Throne. He had been a king’s son, a king’s brother, a king’s uncle. “I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife’s blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.”
Clydas blinked. “A sword that makes its own heat …”
“… would be a fine thing on the Wall.” Jon put aside his wine cup and drew on his black moleskin gloves. “A pity that the sword that Stannis wields is cold. I’ll be curious to see how his Lightbringer behaves in battle. Thank you for the wine. Ghost, with me.” Jon Snow raised the hood of his cloak and pulled at the door. The white wolf followed him back into the night.

Bloodstone Emperor isn't a true account or like "secretly hiding the blueprint of the actual Long Night", but there likely are kernels of truth in it like with Westeros' Night's King or the NW's legendary "Battle for the Dawn" where they supposedly vanquished the Others and the Long Night.

The plan never was to release Dance, TWOIF and then nothing for a decade+, so GRRM built a couple of backdoor connections regarding the Long Night between a Feast for Crows and TWOIF that never had any pay-off, and I think that's the main reason why all that stuff from TWOIF is either loved or hated/ignored by the fanbase with not much in-between.

>In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.
How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser—arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.
Yet the Great Empire of the Dawn was not reborn, for the restored world was a broken place where every tribe of men went its own way, fearful of all the others, and war and lust and murder endured, even to our present day. Or so the men and women of the Further East believe.

In TWOIF we also learn that in Yi Ti's mythology, the Lion of Night is literally the Long Night personified:

>Thirty different gods stood along the walls, surrounded by their little lights. The Weeping Woman was the favorite of old women, Arya saw; rich men preferred the Lion of Night, poor men the Hooded Wayfarer. Soldiers lit candles to Bakkalon, the Pale Child, sailors to the Moon-Pale Maiden and the Merling King. The Stranger had his shrine as well, though hardly anyone ever came to him. Most of the time only a single candle stood flickering at his feet. The kindly man said it did not matter. “He has many faces, and many ears to hear.”
[...]
“Him of Many Faces.”
“And many names,” the kindly man had said. “In Qohor he is the Black Goat, in Yi Ti the Lion of Night, in Westeros the Stranger. All men must bow to him in the end, no matter if they worship the Seven or the Lord of Light, the Moon Mother or the Drowned God or the Great Shepherd. All mankind belongs to him … else somewhere in the world would be a folk who lived forever. Do you know of any folk who live forever?”
“No,” she would answer. “All men must die.”

A Feast for Crows reveals that the Lion of Night is Yi Ti's god of death, but TWOIF goes on to further reveal that he is actually the "wroth" of the Long Night personified in their mythology, which I always think is a very interesting detail.

>How the Long Night came to an end is a matter of legend, as all such matters of the distant past have become. In the North, they tell of a last hero who sought out the intercession of the children of the forest, his companions abandoning him or dying one by one as they faced ravenous giants, cold servants, and the Others themselves. Alone he finally reached the children, despite the efforts of the white walkers, and all the tales agree this was a turning point. Thanks to the children, the first men of the Night’s Watch banded together and were able to fight—and win—the Battle for the Dawn: the last battle that broke the endless winter and sent the Others fleeing to the icy north.
[...]
How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser—arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.
- The World of Ice&Fire

>Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but no one could doubt that he knew his name.
- AGOT, Chapter 24 (Bran)

(four books later)

>“Talk to me. Tell me your name.”
My name. A scream caught in his throat. They had taught him his name, they had, they had, but it had been so long that he’d forgotten. If I say it wrong, he’ll take another finger, or worse, he’ll … he’ll … He would not think about that, he could not think about that. There were needles in his jaw, in his eyes. His head was pounding. “Please,” he squeaked, his voice thin and weak. He sounded a hundred years old. Perhaps he was. How long have I been in here? “Go,” he mumbled, through broken teeth and broken fingers, his eyes closed tight against the terrible bright light. “Please, you can have the rat, don’t hurt me …”
“Reek,” said the larger of the boys. “Your name is Reek. Remember?” He was the one with the torch. The smaller boy had the ring of iron keys.
Reek? Tears ran down his cheeks. “I remember. I do.” His mouth opened and closed. “My name is Reek. It rhymes with leek.” In the dark he did not need a name, so it was easy to forget. Reek, Reek, my name is Reek. He had not been born with that name. In another life he had been someone else, but here and now, his name was Reek. He remembered.
He remembered the boys as well. They were clad in matching lambswool doublets, silver-grey with dark blue trim. Both were squires, both were eight, and both were Walder Frey. Big Walder and Little Walder, yes.
//
Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but no one could doubt that he knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like a hen when Bran told her that, and confessed that Hodor’s real name was Walder.

When Theon is re-introduced as 'Reek' three books later with him having been taken prisoner by Ramsay at the end of Book 2, he is now a man who cannot remember his own name, surrounded by Walders. Wanna know who Roose's new wife is whom Reek meets one chapter after his introduction?

Why of course, she is Walder Frey's daugther. Walda.

>Queen Selyse was adamant. “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 was sick unto death of this wretched boy before he was even born,” the king complained. “His very name is a roaring in my ears and a dark cloud upon my soul.”
“Give the boy to me and you need never hear his name spoken again,” Melisandre promised.
No, but you’ll hear him screaming when she burns him. Davos held his tongue.
[...]
“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—”
“I saw you burn some leeches.”
“And two false kings are dead.”
“Robb Stark was murdered by Lord Walder of the Crossing, and we have heard that Balon Greyjoy fell from a bridge. Who did your leeches kill?”
“Do you doubt the power of R’hllor?”
- Chapter 54, ASOS

Look how desperately Mel is trying to convince Stannis into feeding "The boy" to her flames, in exchange for "A great gift". After all, a great gift "requires a great sacrifice", and when you are trying to give life to stone, "Only death can pay for life".

Which is an interesting phrase, because other than Melisandre, there are only three other people who ever use it or a variation of it:

>“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.”
[...]
“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.
“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.
[...]
The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.
Only death can pay for life.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts.

and:

>“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.”
“Three?”
“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

That's it, nobody else ever uses that phrase. It's always associated with either Mirri and Dany eventually feeding her, her son, husband and herself to the flames in a magic ritual where "Only death can pay for life", Melisandre talking about what great boons and powers she can unlock by feeding people to her flames, and "Jaquen" mentioning it off-handedly (but associated with the Red God once again).

So the gifts of Mel's Red God require a great sacrifice, while also being a form of bloodmagic.

>Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn’t there be dragons too?
[...]
Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as night. “There is a spell.” Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. “But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands.”
Dany went cold all over. “Then you truly are a maegi …”
“Am I?” Mirri Maz Duur smiled. “Only a maegi can save your rider now, Silver Lady.”
[...]
"The smallfolk used to call her Maggy.”
“Maegi?”
“Is that how you say it? The woman would suck a drop of blood from your finger, and tell you what your morrows held.”
“Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery. Some say it is the most powerful as well.”
Cersei did not want to hear that.

The actual terms "bloodmagic" and "bloodmage" actually never appear in the main series again after Book 1, with one little exception in Book 4, once again about a "Maegi", but one that Cersei encountered in her childhood. Essentially we only learn once more that Bloodmagic is not to be trifled with (from workplace-safety conscious Qyburn of all people), but "CERSEI DID NOT WANT TO HEAR THAT" and therefore it never gets brought up again.

lmao, classic cersei

So like I said, other than "Jaquen" and Melisandre using the phrase "Only death may/can pay for life" which is intrinsically linked to bloodmagic through Mirri's teachings in Book 1 and this direct reference to bloodmagic in Book 4, the concept is never really brought up again.

Except being linked to everything Melisandre does of course:

>“It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for life.”
[...]
"And none of them paid the price. Lady Melisandre will tell you, my lord. Only death can pay for life.”
[...]
“Only death can pay for life, my lord. A great gift requires a great sacrifice.”

Such as her little gifts she likes handing out:

>“Jon.” Melisandre was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. “R’hllor is the only true god. A vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes. Open your heart and let the light of the Lord come in. Burn these weirwoods, and accept Winterfell as a gift of the Lord of Light.”
- Chapter 76, ASOS

The reader only learns that this is true for certain in the Prologue two books later, but Melisandre essentially tries to exchange Winterfell against Jon lighting up the literal soul-tree underneath the castle containing all his ancestors immortal souls, to quite literally burn down their afterlife.

Why? She also had Stannis either destroy or condemn all his ancestors' souls in Storm's End to her Red God and absolutely loves burning these trees in general and even equates them with "The Great Other" in her mind, when she has a vision of Bloodraven in his tree-form.