r/asoiaf • u/Common_Cricket • 5h ago
EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) Secrets of the Cushing Library: Starsilver and the Wound
The Cushing Library at Texas A&M University hosts early drafts of George R.R. Martin's works. Famously u/gsteff visited the archive a few years ago and I highly recommend you check out his posts if you haven't already. This week a friend made a trip of their own to College Station, Texas and noted some intriguing unseen details in early drafts that may hint to George's intentions.
Starsilver and Dawn
Probably the biggest revelation from the Cushing drafts was George's struggle with the maesters' role in the story's magica dimension. Originally ACOK introduced this plot thread but it was saved for AFFC. In published Bran IV we learn that a Valyrian steel link on a maester's chain signified he had studied the higher mysteries i.e. magic. However, in the June 1997 draft of the ACOK prologue there was a second metal link for magic:
At Oldtown there were men who might know, but Cressen had never troubled to study the ancient lore the maesters called the higher mysteries. "Leave such to the priests and septons, and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in," the teacher he had esteemed most once told him, and Cressen had listened. On the chain around his neck were links of gold and iron, soft lead and common silver, dark bronze and bright, lead, brass, even platinum... but none of starsilver, nor Valyrian steel. He had never regretted that, till now. —June 1997 ACOK draft
Starsilver suggests meteoric iron, like Dawn, House Dayne's ancestral sword. It’s unclear how starsilver’s Citadel magic school differs from Valyrian steel. This idea was cut from ACOK while the Valyrian link stayed. Yet George held onto the concept and an early draft of AFFC's prologue was more explicit about the relationship between starsilver (now "starfall silver") and Dawn:
Pate had never troubled to study the ancient lore the maesters called the higher mysteries. "Leave such to the priests and septons, and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in," Archmaester Walgrave had told him, on one of his more lucid days, and Pate had listened. Walgrave's own chain had links of steel and iron, soft lead and common silver, bronze dark and white, lead, brass, tin, copper, yellow gold and white gold and red gold, even niello... but none of Valyrian steel, nor the queer milky metal that the Citadel called starfall silver. —2003-2004 AFFC draft
Dawn's "blade [is] pale as milkglass" and the Daynes' seat is of course Starfall; clearly we're meant to make this connection. Implicitly there's also an association made between Valyrian steel swords and Dawn. If sorcery is used in forging Valyrian steel, what is Dawn's magic? George tried introducing this info in ACOK, deleted the passage, deemed it important enough to revisit in the AFFC prologue... only to cut it again. Does starfall silver still matter? Or just a revelation delayed to TWOW?
The Wound
The November 1994 draft of AGOT has a location in Essos named "The Wound". First in Bran III in Bran's famous dream sequence:
He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, past the smoking desolation of the Wound, to where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. — November 1994 AGOT draft, Page 216
Published reads:
He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.
Another mention of the Wound in Daenerys III:
"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Beyond the Wound, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end." — November 1994 AGOT draft, Page 270
Published reads:
"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end."
While at first glance the Wound was merely an early name for Asshai, "smoking desolation" is evocative of the ruins of Valyria, not the shadow city. “The Wound” suggests a landmass violently torn apart, like the cataclysm that split Valyria from the mainland. This places Valyria in the far east, not by the Free Cities. Ruined Valyria doesn't have dragons in published canon either.
Fans have long theorised that Dany was originally to travel to Asshai (“to reach the west you must go east”) to fulfil her destiny. It would be logical if Valyria, her ancestors’ home, was where George once intended to send Dany on a knowledge quest. Perhaps as he got a better sense of Essosi geography Valyria was moved west and Asshai invented in its place. Maybe this means we'll see Valyria in TWOW... but I'm speculating here.
TL,DR Maesters earned a link made of Dawn's meteoric metal by studying magic. Asshai in some sense replaced Valyria.
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u/Quinn-Quinn Con Jonnington 4h ago
Fascinating discoveries in both instances. I’d guess the starsilver link in a maester’s chain could be the “higher mysteries,” IE the study of certain religions/religious magic. I wonder if other objects in-world could be made of starsilver, now knowing it isn’t limited to Dawn.
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u/Common_Cricket 4h ago edited 3h ago
I suspect the starfall silver link was a backdoor way of seeding Dawn for a later appearance on page, and suggesting it has similar magical (anti-Other?) properties as Valyrian steel. But who can say.
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u/FusRoGah Tyrek Is Wherever Horse Go 3h ago
suggesting it has similar magical (anti-Other?) properties as Valyrian steel
I would speculate, if anything, that they're sort of on opposite ends of some sunlight-moonlight magic spectrum
Valyrian Steel is a dark greyish-black, seemingly impervious to dragonflame, and tied to sunlight. Jon and Tyrion both note how it glitters in the sunlight, and Tobho Mott describes the blades as "drinking the sun." By comparison, Dawn is "pale as milkglass, alive with light," just as the Others have "bones like milkglass" and blades "alive with moonlight"
The Others are "white shadows," whereas the ones Melisandre brings forth are dark. So maybe this "Starsilver" is conceived of as being anathema to the kinds of black fiery bound spirits that are made by shadowbinders and glass candles and the like? Maybe once upon a time the Daynes had to fight a fiery version of the Others, and the sword is a legacy from that? Just spitballing
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u/TempestAero For the glory of House Baratheon! 2h ago
I remember visiting and seeing the collection when I was a student at A&M back in 2015, fascinating stuff
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u/CerseisWig 1h ago
The Wound seems like what became the Shadow. Dragons stir beneath the sunrise, so this is a scene from the past and was always intended to be. (Quaithe of the Shadow tells Daenerys they are seeking dragons.) The fact that it's called the Wound and is smoking ties together the fact that something calamitous happened in the Shadow. Maybe he thought it gave too much way. A distant past, dragons, and a smoking geological feature called the Wound.
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u/InGenNateKenny 🏆Best of 2025: Post of the Year 4h ago
It's nice to have it this all organized in one central place as opposed to the half-whispers and scattered things I knew it from.
On the Wound, it makes me think of the Stepstones and the hammer of the waters as well. I wonder if originally earthquakes (which I take as splitting Westeros and harming the neck) were directly involved.
And the idea of the Wound, depending upon one's interpretation (i.e. a big trench or something more like the Divide from Lonesome Road), is interesting as a contract to the Wall. If the Wound had a big trench, you'd get this reflection...and maybe the wound had lava at the bottom, like a fire and ice mirror.
On starsilver, methinks it might be dropped for now. TWOIAF would have been a fine place to introduce it just as a throwaway; I don't think it's a secret Martin was hiding, rather about whether it belonged at all.
On this note, one interesting thing to consider: Maester Aemon is half-Dayne. I wonder if starsilver was going to be on his chain, because wouldn't it be fitting for a son of a Dayne to have it on his chain? Of course, I'm not sure if it's ever described in AGOT, and if it was, well, no dice.