#the five forts

In the books valyrian's are the only people in world who can bond with dragons?

In the books Targs are immune to heat/fire and sickness because their blood is magic?

Hightower's tower was made with dragon fire despite it predating Valyria?

There are other buildings around the world in asoiaf which also used dragon fire but also predate Valyria and their dragons?

Someone told me on tiktok that the OG asoiaf dragons went extinct and Valyrian magicians bred other magic creatures together until they got their version of dragons?

thank you for any help 🙏. I want to get around to reading the books but it's kinda daunting because there's so many of them and they're long and I'm a slow reader 😭

Hey, welcome to Tumblr! (Hope you survive the experience.) Sure, I can answer your questions (certainly better than tiktok and twitter lol sigh), but I do definitely recommend reading the books! Some people find it easier to go with audiobooks (I personally don't, since auditory processing isssues make me tune out in five seconds, same with podcasts, sigh), and that might be a big help for you? But anyway, answers below...

1. Yes... um... it's a question. It's stated that Valyrians are the only ones that can bond with dragons, and furthermore, only ones from the dragonriding families of Valyria. (This is part of the "Doctrine of Exceptionalism", which I'll describe later.) The "dragonseeds" who rode dragons during the Dance were supposedly bastards or descendants of bastards of Targaryens (I'll get to the details in a moment), and we have the example in the current books of Brown Ben Plumm, who Dany's dragons adore, and he is an extremely distant (by like 120 years) descendant of Elaena Targaryen and Aegon IV Targaryen.

However, the dragonseed and dragonrider Addam of Hull, per the histories a bastard of Laenor Velaryon (son of Rhaenys Targaryen), was almost certainly actually the bastard of Corlys Velaryon, and the Velaryons were not a dragonriding family. Though it's possible that one of the pre-Conquest Targaryen ladies married into House Velaryon, so it's not that exceptional. The greater problem is the dragonseed Nettles, of no known background, called out by the narrative as looking distinctly un-Valyrian (she's brown, and note the Velaryons are white in the books), who tamed her dragon by feeding it sheep until it started to like her. Many theorize that while Valyrian blood makes it easy to bond with dragons (due to likely blood magic/genetic bonding with dragons in ancient times, as they claim to be descended from dragons), it is still possible to create that bond the hard way, as the early Valyrians were once a mere tribe of shepherds who discovered dragons nesting in a local chain of volcanoes. The full answer is one of the greater mysteries of ASOIAF, and will hopefully be resolved in later books. (Along with whoever the riders of Dany's other two dragons will be.)

No, they’re not, sorry. According to GRRM, “only Westeros extends to the far north” – north of Essos is the Shivering Sea only, with no connection to the pole.

And according to ancient tales from Yi Ti, the demons of the Lion of Night came from the Grey Waste, beyond the line of hulking structures of fused black stone called the Five Forts. (The same kind of fused black stone that forms the base of the Hightower.)

Got a post directly addressing all of these questions right here. I mean, all of them. I actually think you may have seen that post already, but it’s no worries if you forgot. ;)

joannalannister replied to your post:

But I got the SSM pdf (did I give you the SSM pdf?) after I read twoiaf and GRRM said Essos doesn't extend all the way up, so, in terms of the Five Forts, are you arguing for continental drift and they once protected against the Others? Or are you arguing that the Five Forts were just Cthulu's military organization like the Watch in the past few centuries and defended against invaders? (I'm on mobile so I can't look the GRRM quote up, maybe I'm wrong?)

You don't need to give me the SSM pdf, I have a SSM search engine in my browser. (It's how I get those GRRM quotes so quickly.) I know only Westeros extends to the far north, it's not relevant. Things that are relevant:

“I have dreamed of your Wall, Jon Snow. Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice. We walk beneath one of the hinges of the world.” -- Melisandre, ADWD

Certain scholars from the west have suggested Valyrian involvement in the construction of the Five Forts, for the great walls are single slabs of fused black stone that resemble certain Valyrian citadels in the west... but this seems unlikely, for the Forts predate the Freehold's rise, and there is no record of any dragonlords ever coming so far east.  --The World of Ice and Fire

No discussion of Yi Ti would be complete without a mention of the Five Forts, a line of hulking ancient citadels that stand along the far northeastern frontiers of the Golden Empire, between the Bleeding Sea (named for the characteristic hue of its deep waters, supposedly a result of a plant that grows only there) and the Mountains of the Morn. The Five Forts are very old, older than the Golden Empire itself; some claim they were raised by the Pearl Emperor during the morning of the Great Empire to keep the Lion of Night and his demons from the realms of men… and indeed, there is something godlike, or demonic, about the monstrous size of the forts, for each of the five is large enough to house ten thousand men, and their massive walls stand almost a thousand feet high. Of the lands that lie beyond the Five Forts, we know even less. [...] Whispers reach us of the Grey Waste and its cannibal sands, and of the Shrykes who live there, half-human creatures with green-scaled skin and venomous bites. Are these truly lizard-men, or (more likely) men clad in the skins of lizards? Or are they no more than fables, the grumkins and snarks of the eastern deserts? And even the Shrykes supposedly live in terror of K’dath in the Grey Waste, a city said to be older than time, where unspeakable rites are performed to slake the hunger of mad gods.

--The World of Ice and Fire

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 and Fire

Things I take from this:

The Five Forts are one of the hinges of the world, like the Wall.

K'Dath (a reference to Lovecraft's Kadath) is the east Essos version of what lies beyond the curtain of light at the end of the world.

There was a great war in pre-history, possibly with the Others, possibly with the Deep Ones/Elder Gods. (Are the Others descendants of one of the Elder Gods, exiled to the north pole?)

Time is a wheel. This war may have been at the same time as the Long Night in Westeros that led to the establishment of the Wall, or it might be that history repeated itself thousands of years later at a different "world hinge". It could be that this battle has happened many times, which is why there are so many names for the hero who saved the world. (Besides Jordan, GRRM might also be referencing Moorcock here; certainly he's referenced Campbell.)

Either way, there was a hero who saved humanity and established the Five Forts in Essos to keep the Enemy from coming back. And like the Wall, their true purpose has been forgotten, and all they do now is "guard the marches of the Golden Empire against raiders out of the Grey Waste."

Note, I believe there's two types of prehistorical black stone: the greasy, oily black stone that the Seastone Chair and Asshai and Yeen are made of, and the blocky, fused black stone seen at the Five Forts and the Hightower. I think the greasy stone belonged to the Enemy, and the blocky stone belonged to the Defenders. (The mazemakers of Lorath, destroyed by an enemy from the sea, may have been Defenders who lost their war.) That the blocky black stone is fused similarly to Valyrian construction but not in the Valyrian style suggests that the Defenders may have had dragons, which could explain why there are stories of dragons all over the world dated long before the Valyrians tamed the ones living in the Fourteen Flames.

As for Westeros, the Wall, and the coming War for the Dawn, TWOIAF does have one tantalizing clue:

Septon Barth’s claim that the Valyrians came to Westeros because their priests prophesied that the Doom of Man would come out of the land beyond the narrow sea can safely be dismissed as nonsense, as can many of Barth’s queerer beliefs and suppositions. --TWOIAF

lol no, Yandel. Septon Barth was right. And this gives more more evidence for the theory that the Prince That Was Promised prophecy is tied in with Aegon's Conquest -- that Aegon conquered Westeros because he believed he or his descendants would be needed there to save humanity from the return of the Others. (It could also explain why Aegon married twice, because that's how he understood the meaning of "the dragon must have three heads".)