#or rather they have the potential to be if they forsake their oaths

[deathbind]

Serot's own arsenal of spells and generally how he applies necrotic magic differs from modern day Anactaci. You can clearly see the foundation he laid, but it has been over a thousand years. The order has evolved considerably in that time. There's also the fact that he was reborn at level one and has structured his skills to suit his present needs, but [hand waves]

There are different sects and roles within the Anactaci who call on the Plane of Death in different ways, but certain generalities can be relied upon. Their magic is largely geared toward what would be considered divination. They are the bridge between this life and the next, the messengers of eternity. They commune both with the souls of the dead and with spirits — chiefly spirits / entities on the Plane of Death but spirits of all types, including those like Refhremmit. Indeed, every City of Eternity has one Anactaci dedicated to communing with their patron. It is a sacred office.

Beyond that, their magic is deeply focused on the soul and the threshold between life and death. They are adept at identifying and countering curses or maladies of the soul. They are adept at identifying and addressing possessions or spiritual attachments. The skilled can manipulate the ravages of time on a body or object (a skill shared with the Manthu). The most skilled of all can leave their bodies behind to inhabit ritually prepared objects; these become the teachers of the Anactaci and keepers of the deepest mysteries.

Yes of course, they animate and preserve corpses, either directly or by calling a spirit to inhabit it. This is part of Meketi funerary rites. But, simply making dead things move is only part of their skillset. Indeed, it's the most basic part.

Anactaci are bound by sacred oaths to turn their magic to holy purpose and with a thought for balance always. However, a truly irate or unscrupulous Anactaci could do serious damage. Particularly if they are skilled. Insidious curses and nigh-undetectable possessions (i.e. slowly driving a person to madness with ill luck or nightmares; far worse curses are possible). Yanking a person's soul directly from their body, either holding it captive or causing it to become lost. Learning secrets from spirits or from souls that can utterly destroy a person. Causing them to rapidly age, turning to sun-bleached bone before their eyes, one limb at a time. Or causing them to wither, then return to their correct age, then wither, then return to their correct age — over and over until they don't know whether they're alive or dead. If capable of severing their soul from their body, they can possess others directly, influencing or totally overriding their will. They might not touch a person at all; they might sap all life from their home instead.

Fortunately, such corrupt Anactaci are rare — and swiftly dealt with.

#META / HC: WORLDBUILDING. #RE: ANACTACI #this isn't a polished meta #but I'm reading about Chosen so obvs magical abilities are on my mind #Serot's rain of blood and animate blood he learned as a ghul lord have the fucking pizzazz #but modern Anactaci are frightening in ways you don't think to fear til it's too late #or rather they have the potential to be if they forsake their oaths #which has consequences. Anactaci and Manthu both are literally bound by their oaths. those tattoos aren't merely aesthetic #but that's a discussion for another time #Serot getting angry enough to yank someone's soul directly out of their body tho . . . #he would have to be beyond incensed for that #and would feel absolutely disgusted with himself afterward. like might vomit type of disgusted #still. if Serot wasn't a moral man. he could be horrifying #he could make your blood boil you alive from the inside #he could make your own body turn against you while you're trapped inside helpless #he could keep your soul in a jar while he puppets your body #and allows you to learn whether the incorporeal can feel torment #he could call the Plane of Death into your very soul and watch it consume all life within you #and leave your body to infect anyone else nearby with the same fate #he could banish part of you to the Plane of Death so that the part of you on the Material Plane experiences that torment without reprieve #and must live from then on missing something with a searing ache that was swallowed by death itself #or he could banish you there just briefly and pull you back before you exploded. dangling you just above death like a pot of boiling oil #he could call down plagues. he could raise droves of undead their ranks replenished by their victims #he could drain life from the very earth itself #he WON'T but he COULD #well also it's gonna take time to get back to the power level he was at before dying in his first life #and frankly he doesn't want to be back at the level if he doesn't have to be #but y'know. first life. if he'd been a cruel man.

[agentrouka-blog]

When Jon think about wanting winterfell and it's Lord he felt hunger which he later connect with ghost's hunger. Do you think that passage is implying something?

Hi anon!

I think the passage has many layers when it comes to symbolism and foreshadowing.

ASOS, Jon XII is a fun chapter. Jon’s been through a lot. His trip North of the wall left him traumatized and disillusioned in a way that’s hard to sum up. Anything he had hoped to be proud of in life was obliterated, he suffered serious injury, has been separated from ghost, learned that all his family are dead or missing, fought a viciously cruel battle, feels responsible for the death of his stockholm-syndromy abuser, was stripped of all respect and honor by his superiors, and he got to see a woman die in childbirth. Now Stannis and Mel are squatting at Castle Black, and the threat to the North keeps looming.

Life sucks. 

We’d been introduced to some options that were denied to him in life:

His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. "It is a dream for spring, though," Lord Eddard had said. "Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on."

If winter had come and gone more quickly and spring had followed in its turn, I might have been chosen to hold one of these towers in my father's name. Lord Eddard was dead, however, his brother Benjen lost; the shield they dreamt together would never be forged. (ASOS, Jon V)

or

“If the boy shows any skill with sword or lance, he should have a place with your father’s household guard at the least,” Jon said. “It’s not unknown for bastards to be trained as squires and raised to knighthood. But you’d best be sure Gilly can play this game convincingly. From what you’ve told me of Lord Randyll, I doubt he would take kindly to being deceived.” (ASOS, Samwell IV)

One fails because of the seasons, the other was prevented by Catelyn. The Watch has been a soul-destroying nightmare, Ygritte’s offer of taking over a Tower “after” is not even worth a moment’s consideration to him. Every hope he ever had about his life has been disappointed. 

Jon’s just about sixteen and is completely done. Sam notes how much time Jon spends in the training yard, even though he’s injured and off-duty for the title of turncloak. He does not bother voting in the Lord Commander election. A maligned outcast again. Forever. 

The warg, I’ve heard them call me. How can I be a warg without a wolf, I ask you?” His mouth twisted. “I don’t even dream of Ghost anymore. All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones. Sometimes I hear Robb’s voice, and my father’s, as if they were at a feast. But there’s a wall between us, and I know that no place has been set for me.” (ASOS, Samwell IV

He is lonely. Even Ghost is gone, his one proof that he belongs to something.

Stannis alienates Jon by talking ill of Robb, but he offers Jon recognition for the things he did right, a rare thing, and then he offers him legitimization. Basically, “You proved your worth and you have the Right blood. All you ever wanted can be yours. For the small price of breaking your oaths for real and of your own volition and forsaking your gods.” Downright mephistophelian.

Jon is torn, can’t sleep, fights. For the first time he has a real choice. He remembers the traumatic incident where his bastardy became a true concept to him.

That morning he called it first. “I’m Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.”

I thought I had forgotten that. Jon could taste blood in his mouth, from the blow he’d taken. (ASOS, Jon XII)

And Jon’s response is a near black-out rage against his sparring partner. All his suppressed feelings of grief and anger and longing and loneliness are just broiling inside him.

Why am I so angry? he asked himself, but it was a stupid question. Lord of Winterfell. I could be the Lord of Winterfell. My father’s heir.

Jon soaks in the hot tub and thinks of Winterfell, mulls restoring it versus not belonging and destroying its soul in the process

When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said … but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods

The tree is almost described like a person. A person with Tully coloring, like all his siblings save Arya. Like Sansa. The hot springs in Winterfell have a potential link to his decision to join the Watch, or at the very least to his siblings in general. The castle of Winterfell is juxtaposed with the heart, with the purpose and point of it all. Save a structure by destroying what made it a meaningful place? Betray his family in his heart, the person whose castle is truly is, betray all his values and his gods?

He takes a walk past sites of all his recent experiences and North the Wall over the recent battle field and just sits to think. 

Ygritte wanted me to be a wildling. Stannis wants me to be the Lord of Winterfell. But what do I want? The sun crept down the sky to dip behind the Wall where it curved through the western hills. Jon watched as that towering expanse of ice took on the reds and pinks of sunset. 

There’s an essay I could write about walls, Tyrion, Jon and Sansa (the sun to Arya’s moon) and how they all interact in the books, but let’s say just like this word play, the fact that Jon answers his own question is not an accident:

"Close your beak, crow. Spin yourself around, might be you'd find who you're looking for."

Jon turned.

The singer rose to his feet. (ASOS, Jon I)

The singer rose. Lyanna, his mother, the riddle. But also Sansa, who unwittingly took up her mantle. One unlocks his path to the other and everything that follows in his imagination:

I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister’s son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly’s boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We’d find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance’s son and Craster’s would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb.

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger … he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought.

Jon paints a picture of recreating his own childhood with his wolf pack at Winterfell, only this time there are no outcasts, and he is the Father. He gets to be Ned. The Lord of Winterfell with a lady’s love. And a son, something he had, apparently, dreamed of until he stoppped. 

He has always wanted this thing that he has no right to and it filled him with a guilt strong enough to concern the gods. But he admits it to himself, lets himself truly feel it. The feeling flows through him the same way the rage did earlier. powerful and all encompassing. 

Like a dragonglass blade. There we have some lovely foreshadowing for a) potentiall the origin of the Others, b) Jon’s paternity, and c) his own death when his desire to abandon his vows and head to Winterfell is met with, you know, some blades. Not to mention d) his desire to have these things.

Each of these is answered by his primal hunger response. Which is of course, his connection to Ghost. The wolf he has so woefully said goodbye to, that he missed deeply and bitterly, chooses this moment to reappear. This moment where Jon returns to his own feelings, his true self.

a) the answer to the Others are the direwolves, the Starks, their magical connection to Winterfell and what happened way back when.

b) the answer to Jon’s paternity is a violent embrace of his mother’s side.

c) the answer to his own stabbing will be warging into Ghost and biding his time in there, becoming more wolf than he ever anticipated.

d) the answer to his heart’s desire...

It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. “Ghost?” He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. “Ghost!” he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run. He was leaner than he had been, but bigger as well, and the only sound he made was the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath his paws. When he reached Jon he leapt, and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them. “Gods, wolf, where have you been?” Jon said when Ghost stopped worrying at his forearm. “I thought you’d died on me, like Robb and Ygritte and all the rest. I’ve had no sense of you, not since I climbed the Wall, not even in dreams.” The direwolf had no answer, but he licked Jon’s face with a tongue like a wet rasp, and his eyes caught the last light and shone like two great red suns.

Red suns. Arya’s wolf has golden coins (haggling for death, faceless men coins, spinning fates), Grey Wind has molten gold (like a crown that kills you). 

Jon’s wolf has red suns. Like the colors that the sun painted on the Wall. The direwolf in heart tree colors, inverted bastard colors of house Stark, Tully colors, Sansa colors. 

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre’s. He had a weirwood’s eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one. And he alone of all the direwolves was white. Six pups they’d found in the late summer snows, him and Robb; five that were grey and black and brown, for the five Starks, and one white, as white as Snow.

He had his answer then.

Not the red gods, not fire. The old gods. the heart tree, the wolves. He may be a Snow, but the old gods gave him Ghost. His own wolf. His white wolf. His place was made by their will. 

There is honor in that choice. No matter what anyone else says, Jon knows who he is and he has that power: to reject betraying his heart. 

How does this choice led by Ghost fit the layers?

a) The answer to the Others: don’t steal, don’t trick. Be honest. Accept what was painful. Not the Wall matters, the answer is in the heart tree.

b) The Dragon father does not Need to guide his decisions. He can let that go. He is a Snow.

c) Being in Ghost will lead him back to himself. Not fire, not Melisandre. The old gods.

d) Well... What does Jon want? What IS his answer?

Jon is filled with sudden energy. He strides back, rejects Val in his mind, stalks dramatically into the dining hall and is suddenly voted Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. We close on this:

So Jon Snow took the wineskin from his hand and had a swallow. But only one. The Wall was his, the night was dark, and he had a king to face.

Jon’s answer? We never hear it in this chapter. 

We hear it in ADWD, Jon I:

"By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa." 

And ADWD, Jon IV:

Jon said, "Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa." 

The chapter is followed by? Sansa. Rebuilding Winterfell out of snow. 

When Jon lets go of pretense, honestly asks himself what he wants, shame or not, his wolf takes over and helps him find the answer and the path. The answer is not in taking the Castle and creating a mimicry of what it was, it is in honoring what it truly was and truly means. The heart over the structure. 

And in giving supremacy to the heart, to the red-white heart, he unknowingly paves the way for his own place: Winterfell built of Snow. He doesn’t have to steal the castle, he will be invited to belong.

That’s my own humble interpretation, anyway.

#asoiaf #jon snow #ASOS #Ghost the direwolf #asoiaf speculation #layered symbolism #foreshadowing #jonsa #Starklings

[megashadowdragon]

itsclydebitches

With respect, Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat. In his FIRST appearance he'd had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings. He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city, he kept a woman on life support prisoner and his treatment of Robyn convinced a technically legal protest into an outright criminal. Not to mention he abandons the best defense humanity has against the Grimm to keep some control. Shooting a dissenter seem very in character

sent by anonymous

“Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat” - For which he was suitably chastised by Ozpin. It’s a whole conversation in “Welcome to Beacon” and, back when RWBY was doing a better job of handling these complex issues, that conversation gives weight to both sides. Ironwood isn’t trying to, idk, take over Beacon or something with his army. He wants to be prepared in order to help people. “I’m just being cautious.” Ozpin points out that scaring everyone won’t help, but notably the story acknowledges that Ozpin’s preferences are far from full-proof. “Do you really believe your children can win a war?” Can you prove to me that the kids we’re training will be enough when the shit hits the fan? Ozpin doesn’t have an answer. He dodges answering by saying only that he hopes his kids won’t have to fight, not that he has unwavering faith that they will win. Then Beacon falls. Ozpin dies. Ironwood is left alone with an entire kingdom to keep safe and I think it’s worth acknowledging that he did that. Mantle is far from perfect, there’s a lot there to fix, but the people are alive and that’s in part thanks to the soldiers that keep the grimm from eating them all. The rest? That’s due to Penny, a symbol of hope that Ironwood gave to the people. He learned that from this conversation with Ozpin.

“In his FIRST appearance he’d had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings.” - It’s not Ironwood’s first appearance. He meets with the inner circle, has his talk with Ozpin, introduces his Atlesian knights to the public, attends the Beacon dance, discovers Ruby fighting Cinder, later compliments Ruby for her initiative in Ozpin’s office, confides in Glynda that night, and helps defend Vale against Roman’s attack. So your implication that as his “first” appearance this tells us he’s really an irredeemable person is not accurate.

Second, I’ve seen this claim a lot the last couple of months and I finally went back to find/watch the scene for myself (it’s in “Breach”). These were not secret meetings. Ironwood “reported” to the council which I assume is what he’s supposed to do. Given that he is a Headmaster. And this is the council overseeing the schools. Keeping updated is their entire deal. Were these reports fair to Ozpin? We don’t know. You might assume they’re full of lies and horrible misrepresentations, but that’s not what the text tells us. Ironwood told the council Ozpin’s plans, then the council said, ‘No way are you holding the Vytal festival with those precautions alone.’ Then the council asked Ironwood to provide troops for additional security. Did Ironwood manipulate the council and paint Ozpin as a villain to get what he wanted? Maybe. Did Ironwood objectively say precisely what’s going on - Ozpin thinks his huntsmen are enough to keep everyone safe in the event of an attack - and the council, independent of him, came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough? Maybe. Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Ironwood is doing all this because he honestly believes it will help others. He begs Ozpin to understand that: “This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise I will keep our people safe. You have to trust me.” And you know what? He wasn’t entirely wrong. No one could have predicted that Salem’s minions would take control of his army. Ironwood did, however, predict that there would be an attack too large for a bunch of students to handle… and he was right. Beacon fell because a those half-trained kids weren’t enough to hold off a major attack, but Ironwood did everything he could to try and prevent that. In a slightly better world where his army wasn’t unexpectedly taken advantage of, that could have easily been what turned the tide of battle and saved Beacon instead. The world where everyone views Ironwood as a hero for providing those extra forces is just a smidge away from the world where everyone views Ironwood as a villain for inadvertently providing the enemy with those extra forces… but the forces themselves are not a black and white bad thing to have. Not in a world where your festivities are interrupted by the giant bird trying to eat the audience.

“He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city” - Yes, the embargo hurts the city financially. Ironwood is attempting to keep it from being hurt in the ‘everyone is wiped out’ kind of way. Post the Fall of Beacon he’s unsure if the other Kingdoms will declare war against Atlas or not, so it’s not wise to continue giving them one of the easiest means of attack. That’s the official story, but Ironwood (and the audience) know that Salem has also been collecting dust for a while now… so how about we stop giving her any more? Was this the right move to make? Are short-term economic difficulties worth avoiding the risk of potentially supplying enemies with the means of destroying you? I can’t answer that, but it’s not a clear-cut bad decision like you’re making it out to be. Retroactively we can say that no one attacked Atlas and Salem seems to have stopped collecting dust because the writers forgot about it… but Ironwood doesn’t get to see into the future. He didn’t know things would turn out this way. Once again, he’s trying to prevent tragedies, not just survive them when they come along. The balance between short-term sacrifice and long-term protection is far from an easy thing to strike and a character’s failure to achieve perfection despite their best efforts says more about their luck than their morals. Ironwood is an incredibly flawed man, but those flaws have always shown throw via his attempts to help others.

“He kept a woman on life support prisoner” - Are we talking abut Amber of Fria here? Either way that’s a gross misrepresentation of what happened and, frankly, does little to make me receptive to your other arguments. Amber was attacked, Qrow brought her back to the inner circle, Ironwood kept her alive so that the rest of the power wouldn’t immediately pass to Cinder (and, I would think, because this group isn’t in the habit of just letting friends die if at all possible). Fria was the Winter Maiden, she got dementia, and Ironwood had her live out the rest of her days in a facility so that a) no one murdered her, b) a Maiden with dementia didn’t wreak havoc on the city (we saw her powers go wild during the fight), and c) the power passed to an ally when she finally died. How do you know Fria was a prisoner? Was there a scene I missed where she said as much or, just as likely, might she have agreed to these precautions once her memory started to fade? Amber, meanwhile, was in a coma and unable to consent to anything. Ironwood did not kidnap her for nefarious experimentation, nor do we have any evidence that he held Fria hostage. That sort of thinking only makes “sense” when we’re already inclined to paint a character’s every action as morally corrupt. Is a 80 year old who keeps wandering into the street held prisoner because they were put in a home where they could be taken care of? That’s this with the added complications of “The 80 year old could kill everyone with magic. Or reveal to the world that magic exists” and “A lot of people want to kill this 80 year old” and “If they succeed the world is #screwed.”

Nothing here proves that Ironwood would be willing to shoot an allied kid. “Ironwood did controversial things in the name of protecting others” does not equal “Ironwood is willing to murder an ally.” Rather, these things contradict because we’ve spent six volumes with Ironwood pushing every limit possible to help others, not attack them. Lists like these likewise ignore everything that Ironwood did which doesn’t support shooting Oscar: every conversation he’s ever had where he didn’t attack someone for disagreeing with him, every action he’s taken being in the service of helping others (even if there’s disagreement about how to best go about that), him flipping his gun around when Qrow (presumably) attacked him, reassuring the Vytal students that there’s no shame in running from the fight, confiding in Glynda, standing up for Weiss, sending Yang her arm, being overjoyed to (he thinks) see Ozpin again, willingly training Oscar, choosing to trust RWBYJNR with both his plan and the relic, listening to them later about Robyn and telling the council about Salem, destroying his arm to protect the people, choosing arrest rather than, I don’t know, just trying to straight up kill Team RWBY for daring to say no to him. Because isn’t that the Ironwood you’ve described above? Someone who won’t hesitate to do anything to get what he wants, even murder? It’s a compelling character, but I don’t think we’ve seen that character anywhere prior to Volume 7′s finale. That character is the opposite of who we had before. When things get tough, stressful, and traumatic the show has said, time and time again, that this is how Ironwood treats his allies

iron-and-ice I never thought I’d see people referring to Ironwood providing comfortable protected residence to an elderly woman in possession of magical WMD powers as ‘imprisonment’. Fria, unlike other ‘good guys’, understood what her duty was. Vol 7 MVP, undisputed.

#rwby #rwby fria #rwby ironwood #james ironwood #general ironwood #ironwood rwby #itsclydebitches