Anon Ask: Old Ones of ASOIAF

One thing that keeps popping up in WOIAF is the mysterious substance known simply as black stone.

The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to be found by the First Men when they first came to Old Wyk. 

Even more enigmatic to some scholars is the great square fortress of black stone that dominates the isle … The fused black stone of which it is made suggests Valyria, but the plain, unadorned style of architecture does not, for the dragonlords love little more than twisting stone into strange, fanciful and ornate shapes.Within, the narrow twisting, windowless passages strike many as being tunnels rather than halls; it is very easy to get lost amongst their turnings. Mayhaps this is no more than a defensive measure designed to confound attackers, but it too is singularly un-Valyrian. The labyrinthine nature of its interior architecture has led Archmaester Quillion to suggest that the fortress might have been the work of the mazemakers

​On the Isle of Toads can be found an ancient idol, a greasy black stone crudely carved into the semblance of a gigantic toad of malignant aspect, some forty feet high. 

Maesters and other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the enigmas of Sothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them. Yeen has remained a desolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it o every side has scarce touched it. (“A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter,” Nymeria is supposed to have said when she laid eyes on it, if the tales are true). Every attempt to rebuild or resettle Yeen has ended in horror. 

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 these forts, for each of the five is large enough to house ten thousand men, and their massive walls stand almost a thousand feet high … 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 Five Forts predate the Freehold’s rise, and there is no record of any dragonlords ever coming so far east.

Its’ [Asshai] origins are lost in the mists of time. Even the Asshai’i do not claim to know who built their city; they will say only that a city has stood here since the world began and will stand here until it ends … Travelers tell us that the city is built entirely of black stone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all. Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it  

What we likely have here is an ancient but now extinct race whose civilization predates human civilization in ASOIAF; one of the elder races akin to the CotF, giants and Others. Their domains once extended from the Iron Isles and Oldtown in the west, to Yeen in Sothoryos in the south, and to the Five Forts of Yi Ti and Asshai in the east. 

In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts   all impossibly ancient    claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all our learning fails us. These Asshai’i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.

We know Asshai was built and once inhabited by this race, and it was likely these same people the texts were referring to. Could this same race that built the black stone edifices be the cause of the origins of Valyria in that they taught the Valyrians their magical arts before going extinct? Could it have been like the Andals learning iron working for the Rhoynar or the Valyrians had to pay a steep price, ie numerous human sacrifices, for this knowledge? 

seantcomics – I think I got your ask by mistake…