The Maester's Path: Link 2

Link 2 for The Maester's Path, the promo website for Game of Thrones, is active, and it's much more intricate than the first link was. This time the focus is on "sound," specifically conversations at the Inn of the Crossroads that tell something about several of the great houses of Westeros. The conversations are pretty interesting but also sort of hard to hear, and the houses from them are mentioned indirectly. After listening to all 5 or 6 conversations, you go to a board where there are many sigils of bannermen houses; you're supposed to mix and match the sigils in the smaller red circles to create the great house sigils mentioned in the conversations. (One of the great house sigils you can make is a red herring and isn't actually mentioned in the conversations.)

The best source of help I've seen so far has been the comments of this post talking about it at fansite WinterIsComing. There's also a really cool heraldry section over at Westeros.org, but if you don't already know at least something about the great houses, it's hard to figure out where to start looking to find what sigil is what. The reward for this one is another 30-second clip from the series, featuring a character very well loved by the fandom (highlight or copy/paste into a word document to see what scene: Catelyn Stark is at the Inn of the Crossroads, being pestered by the singer Marillion, when Tyrion Lannister and company enter the inn end spoiler). Not quite as cool as the scene from last week but still interesting to get our first real sense of how these characters will work.

Overall The Maester's Path is very involving and intricate, and obviously the work HBO and their subcontractor Campfire Media have put into the site is impressive. Curious as to what will come in the next few weeks and of course very curious to see how the series looks and what the viewership numbers will be for the premiere on April 17th. Fans of the books are amped up, of course, but I'm interested in seeing what people who have never read the books think.

Again, if you'd like to join me as an acolyte, use the following link: http://itsh.bo/edmQfU. If you sign up after following this link to the website, I gain an acolyte; I'm currently 1/5, or 20%.

A programming note: on April 3rd at 9 PM eastern/pacific, HBO will air the first 15 minutes of the first episode of Game of Thrones as a sneak peak of the series, and it will make this 15-minute long clip available on HBO.com afterward.

This week should be relatively chaotic for me, with the end of classes, some events, prepping for finals for this quarter, and probably news on whether or not I was accepted into a study abroad program for next year, which then will prompt housing questions and all sorts of other complicated almost-real-life things. I'll keep posting whenever possible, however.