#The Rose stabbening

[picnicbask3t]

YAHHHHHHHH💜🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 ITS AMAZING

ILL GET MY PART DONE SOON PROMISE 💜 TYSM FOR TRADING WITH ME

A trad art with @picnicbask3t !

Took 4 months to actually get to it but at last I did XD!

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Hardhome in TWOW

I've seen a lot of takes that we won't see Hardhome in TWOW and that whatever happens there will remain offpage. I was in this camp for a while too; it'd be very creepy to not have a view of what happens there and only learn later on. However, I'm more convinced that we actually will see it in TWOW, and that it's a far more important location than we give it credit for.

In ADWD, Hardhome is first mentioned in Jon VIII, and is mentioned by name 23 times. A woods witch named Mother Mole has witnessed a vision promising ships that will carry the free folk to salvation across the narrow sea from Hardhome, and so they settle there. Of course, prophecies are a pain in the ass, and while it comes true it's... not as advertised. There are ships coming to Hardhome to rescue them, sent by Jon Snow, but they are beat by slavers from the Free Cities who captured the free folk. Of course, a storm makes one ship drift off course and land in Braavos, where they immediately free the free folk who were enslaved. But it remains a very important location for Jon.

Expedition to Hardhome

When Jon mentions this location and Mother Mole, his officers say it is a cursed and unholy place, and Jon recounts the story of what happened there centuries prior.

Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year. Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement. Six centuries had come and gone since that night, but Hardhome was still shunned. The wild had reclaimed the site, Jon had been told, but rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins were haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood.

Something happened that caused the free folk to shun it forever, and a lot of theories have sprung on what happened there; perhaps it was slavers raiding, or it was the Faceless Men doing their own mini-Doom as a precursor to the true Doom of Valyria. I have my own idea of what happened there, but first, set dressing (like salad dressing, but for settings).

Jon does not want for the free folk to succumb to a nasty fate at the hands of the Others. He doesn't want them to die and be added to the ever growing army of wights at their call. The free folk deserve to be rescued and given a better life. So Jon sends Cotter Pyke with 11 ships (3 Braavosi, 4 Lyseni, and 4 Night's Watch) to provide relief. However, since the slavers already came, when they arrive, the free folk are untrusting, and believe that the ships are slaver ships. The situation is also incredibly bad there, as Cotter notes in the infamous letter he sends to Jon from Hardhome.

At Hardhome, with six ships. Wild seas. Blackbird lost with all hands, two Lyseni ships driven aground on Skane, Talon taking water. Very bad here. Wildlings eating their own dead. Dead things in the woods. Braavosi captains will only take women, children on their ships. Witch women call us slavers. Attempt to take Storm Crow defeated, six crew dead, many wildlings. Eight ravens left. Dead things in the water. Send help by land, seas wracked by storms. From Talon, by hand of Maester Harmune.

So Jon decides to lead another great ranging to Hardhome to provide overland relief. The Night's Watch is really against it, as is Melisandre (more below), but Jon finds it important enough to try to do anyways. He makes plans with Tormund, before he gets the pink letter. After that, he decides instead to have Tormund lead the Night's Watch to Hardhome while he marches south with the free folk to murder the fuck out of Ramsay. And then he's stabbenated.

After that, it's unsure exactly if this expedition will still occur. However, I think that because Hardhome is mentioned so often, and because of an SSM, that we will at the least see Hardhome, and that the expedition will still occur, albeit maybe not exactly as planned.

The Doom of Hardhome

Melisandre says Hardhome is doomed and that nobody will return from it. She also has visions that fit well with Hardhome.

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained. Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death.

The most interesting part of this quote is the flaming arrows arcing above a wooden wall. The rest is pretty obviously Hardhome, but this implies something more happening. Not necessarily a battle, but a glimpse at the confrontation to come? Thus far the wights are just nibbling at the edges, but according to the visions, it won't be long until the Others sweep in and put an end to everything there.

But there is one thing that to me confirms that Hardhome will appear onpage and it won't be something mentioned after the fact. In this post by nobodysuspectsthebutterfly, an SSM is brought up about GRRM visiting Rotorua park in New Zealand as inspiration for a future location in the books that hasn't appeared yet but eventually will. OP had previously noted similarities between Hardhome and Rotorua, specifically with the shrieking caves that both possess. They also mention that the aftermath of the initial destruction at Hardhome sounds a lot like a geothermic eruption (which I agree with), and Rotorua has thermal pools and geysers and bubbling mud and the like.

All this put together, I think that Rotorua is the inspiration for Hardhome, and that since it is the basis of a location that will eventually appear, Hardhome will appear onpage. To me, this makes a lot more sense than Hardhome being something that is merely mentioned offscreen. For one, while we have seen the wights in action before, we haven't exactly seen the Others come out in full force and seen what they are truly capable of. The closest was the Fist of the First Men, but that is mostly relayed in a flashback after the fact, and as far as we know, the Others themselves didn't make an appearance, just the wights.

In this way, Hardhome is an important place to see. In Mel's vision, she mentions the winds rising and an impossibly cold white mist sweeping in to kill all the fires in the cave. White mist and extreme (supernatural) cold are specific elements that appear when the Others approach, which implies to me the Others themselves are going to arrive at Hardhome. Essentially, Hardhome is a precursor to the truly horrible apocalyptic stuff that will happen once they breach the Wall. This will be the first time we see the Others truly in action and not just the wights, to give us a mere taste of just how bad things will get when the Long Night finally falls. Also it fits thematically. Hardhome was once destroyed by fire (volcanic events), and now it will be destroyed again by ice (the Others).

The big question of course is who will be there to witness it? While Jon Snow led the expedition in the show, I don't see this as very likely. His last thought was rushing south to deal with Ramsay, and I don't think he's going to suddenly change his mind to stay at the Wall after that. If anything, that's just going to harden him against Ramsay. So Jon as the POV there seems unlikely. That leaves only three more people, in my mind; Bran, Melisandre, or Davos.

Bran is a strong possibility, but if we are to really get a good look at the Others doing their thing, I think it's better and more powerful if we get an actual first person perspective. Bran could show us via skinchanging, but that lacks the personal intimacy of a very apocalyptic event. Melisandre meanwhile would have no interest in going to Hardhome. She believes it's doomed and there is nothing to be done about that.

That leaves Davos. While he is not connected to Hardhome in any way right now, Skagos is rather close to Hardhome. It's possible he gets Rickon and leaves for White Harbor, but since the seas are said to be very stormy right now, they wind up in Hardhome, or at Eastwatch, where you would want to leave for Hardhome instead of Castle Black. Davos is sort of the anti-Melisandre; the two are opposites in a lot of ways, and their influence on Stannis keeps him from steering too far into Melisandre's direction. She has no qualms with burning a child if it means a stone dragon will wake. Davos is vehemently opposed to such an act under any circumstances.

So if Davos learns that Stannis is dead (allegedly) and hears that Melisandre says Hardhome is hopeless and should be left alone, what would he do? I think he would want to help the free folk there, even under the bad circumstances. It may be a hopeless mission, but to Davos, I think trying to do something about it is better than not doing anything at all. I'm not entirely sure what is left for Davos if Stannis is dead. Perhaps he might not go to Hardhome at all, but it's just a possibility in my mind.

Another reason Davos at Hardhome might work well is that if this is a precursor to the Long Night in Westeros, someone like Davos as our POV there would be fitting. Most people in Westeros will be extremely unfamiliar with the Others, or not even think they are real. Davos has no real connection with the Others, never saw them. It would be completely unreal for someone like him, a former smuggler from King's Landing, to see something so powerful, supernatural, and inhuman at the Others. But if he does go to Hardhome... I worry he might not get back.

The problem is that it might not entirely be fitting of an end for him. Davos is one of those characters where I have literally no idea what or where his story is leading to, and that I think the show didn't spoil much about. Bran is another strong contender, but I feel like someone should be there physically to really drive home the horror of everything happening.

The point being, Hardhome is important to show. I get the argument that it's scarier not seeing everything, and that can work. But we know almost nothing about the Others, and despite being the main antagonist force of the series, we've seen them literally only twice in all five books. If we are to build them up as this big threat, and give us a glimpse as to how serious of a threat they are, then Hardhome should be shown onpage. Show, don't tell. That's storytelling 101.

Regardless, we will be seeing the Others a lot more in TWOW I'm sure. Winter is here, and the Long Night is not far from taking centre stage.