HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

How are the Unsullied getting to Casterly Rock (as it's on the West coast of Westeros whereas Dragonstone is off the Eastern one)?

The answer would've been "using Yara's fleet" but now I'm not sure what the answer is.

Movie magic?

tyrion will def be there which will be the character focus. as for how it happens, in the books they talk a lot about how tyrion was in charge of the sewers at the rock and even tho they've already had one city taken that way i wouldn't be surprised if that was the direction they went again. and yeah they will suddenly just be there.

fairly sure there was a grey worm looks at secret cave bit in one of the trailers

Take the river upstream to the westerlands and march south

Google 1 map, nerds

They have like 12 episodes to fit in probably 4 or 5 more wars. I don't really care at this point about mph realism.

Well, the writers seem to feel the same way.

Thank god

The only way I'll watch this again is if someone tells me they launch Tyrion onto the back of a dragon with a giant crossbow.

i was thinking they'll find some way to put the mountain on the crossbow bolt and get him on the back of one of the dragons. because that would be epic win

my expectations are currently in the region of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD86VnvyXKg

i'd love if they'd showed the r&d meetings in which westeros's greatest minds decided on "a crossbow, but bigger"

dunno what was funnier, the stupid crossbow or the maester saying "we noticed that arrows pierced the dragon before, so that got us thinking"

The way the crossbow was presented was dumb, but it would have annoyed me way more if dragons were basically invincible and required some sort of magic to take down. I like that they are just going to throw a bunch of huge bolts (I assume that they are going to build hundreds of these) at the dragons and probably succeed in taking at least one down.

It's weird though that the ballista is only now being invented in Westeros.

yeah i mean they had catapults of a type during blackwater bay, right?

well I mean, regular crossbows seam to be pretty common, it seems very unlikely that nobody ever thought about making a really big one for attacking castles, ships, etc.

anyway, now reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista because I am a nerd

they'll be alright if they aim at the flashing red spot on the dragon's back

achievementunlocked.jpeg

dragon's weakness should be a giant ball of yarn

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oD_6zsiO3U8/UFDKH6a4BJI/AAAAAAAAB2I/5LnMezpGMV0/s1600/IMG_2005.JPG

hahahahahaaaa

I think you all are being too dismissive about the giant crossbow. Like it was only fairly recently that the people at Kings Landing realized that dragons actually exist.

Now think about the ways they know to kill people and things:
there's strangulation (how would this be accomplished? a giant lasso? a triangulated lasso attack?),
falling from high places (dragons can fly),
poison (how to apply? would it work?),
bludgeoning (would require the attacker to be airborne, or managing to capture the dragon at rest and avoiding being burned to death while bludgeoning),
burning (dragon's are fire resistant),
and stabbing.

A giant stabbing implement that could be engineered to be airborne, seems like an intelligent choice.

Of possible interest, Jaime is the only Lannister we've seen use a weapon other than a crossbow (or a shield, as a bludgeon) to this point.

xp: Also for poison, a giant poison-containing spear.

But a huge crossbow could be effective for attacking ships from the land.

i don't think anyone's saying it's a bad idea, just that it didn't warrant a scene worth of buildup about the weapon that the finest minds in westeros have been working on.

Actually it can be viewed as 4lulz that one scene is "what are you going to do about DRAGONNZ?" which is followed by "my lady, you see... it's a really big... crossbow"

i would grudgingly laugh if when the crossbow is finally wheeled out and fired the shot misses widely, after which the dragon flies over and roasts the crossbow

Xps to tombot

Tyrion fucked some people up with an axe during blackwater

LocalGarda's take on the last episode super OTM. The Big Crossbow reveal and then casually shooting into a priceless artifact was ridiculous. Though I guess the latter can be spun into "fuck the past". IDK, never been super in love with this show, but it remains entertaining and I'm not particularly angry about the way it's going. It's fun.

I dont think the Lannisters care about those dragon skulls anyway do they? "These were Roberts" she said really dismissively like that was his pool room or something.

on the contrary they hate them no doubt.

okay, so assuming you live in Medieval Westeros, what weapon would you invent to take out an airborne dragon?

http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/590x/Putin-axe-600740.jpg

i'm not a GoT trivia buff, but hasn't the show has established numerous different new, previously unknown (and often ridiculous) mechanisms and technologies to deal with plot issues?

for example, letting people have magical powers to slip through tiny holes, arya being a shapeshifter, daenerys is invulnerable to fire, cersei's maester knows about a bunch of green shit underneath kings landing that's capable of blowing up half the city, jon snow is brought back from the dead, bran can teleport through time and space and is also a three eyed raven, etc etc etc etc

given all that, it doesn't seem like it makes sense to look at the westeros military technology and assume those are the only options to deal with a (totally real) dragon. for example, would it have been that weird for the maester to be like "oh, i found something interesting down here in the cellar...it's ANTI-dragonglass. yes, the ancient ones knew of it bla bla bla but now it has been forgotten, etc etc". that example sucks but i'm just saying it's a fantasy universe that has already had numerous stupid events take place and with numerous characters gifted with fantasy powers. they're not limited to a giant crossbow

anyway as others have said it's not so much the crossbow as the hilarious build-up to to it

But the party line in Kings Landing is that magic stuff doesn't exist. On the other hand, Maester Quyburn did figure out how to do organ transplants and bring a dead person back to life, and maybe his medical engineering skills would extend into military engineering, but then Ben Carson was a gifted neurosurgeon with limited talents in other areas. Like maybe Cersei's maester is the Ben Carson of the Maester Class.

ok, i just thought about ben carson stabbing someone in the belt for the first time in forever. lol

Also the decimation of Danerys' navy is quite convenient, as Jon will soon appear with Davros, who knows shit about ships.

the appearance of Davros would certainly be a turn-up for the books

It's more the "We are working on a...solution" then returning later to the crossbow, rather than just saying "dragons? Got a big crossbow".

ideally he'd have written down 12' on a napkin to indicate the size of the crossbow, leading to later confusion.

that would be about right though? certainly a Stonehenge scenario would enliven things a bit!

would make more sense if he was utilizing wildfire again, like rigging it up to the crossbow to explode inside the dragon or something.

Is the arrow made of any special material like Dragonstone or anything or is it just a really big and sharp arrow?

the mundanity of dragons being killed w ballistae fits the end of magic theme, i like it

I'm going assume that most of King's Landing's scientists and engineers were executed for heresy by the Sparrows and this big crossbow was the work of the sub-par minds who were left alive.

Isn't the crossbow guy the same guy who resurrected the Mountain? I know when I do something really good at work I just phone it in for a bit and coast through on the goodwill and that's exactly what's happening here.

Was it the Dragonlance books where their solution was to get the dragon to chase you down a specially constructed, ever narrowing corridor until the dragon gets stuck and can then be stabbed with aforementioned lances through holes in the wall?

A giant crossbow certainly seems a lot easier.

xpost he jotted "Make it Bigger" on a ravenst-it note and sent it down to R&D.

They'd have to make loads of the big crossbows and fire enough of them at once as the Harpy Ultras did. No doubt we'll see a thousand of the things have been made by either next episode or the one after.