Jenny of Oldstones

This post ties in with my excitement for Classic Wow, which comes out on August 27. I used to be a bigger gamer when younger, not so much anymore. I did get an invite to play the beta for Classic, but it’s closing next week, and I really haven’t played for a while anyway, due to the content level cap stagnating almost a month ago. The people I played with seemed very eager, but we have lost contact already. I think it just goes to show the level of excitement that most people have for this original game returning. We had so much fun, and everyone helped everyone. Now I’m in a lull but no less excited for next month. I’ve found two potential guilds to play on in Classic. One is some folks I played TBC with, and I love these people and trust them completely. I still get on Discord with them occasionally. But I just found out they will be on a pvp server, and while I always leveled that in the past, I just don’t think I want to in Classic. I am going to be playing a healer class and likely be soloing most of the time, so don’t want to deal with that. Plus, I will be leveling behind the curve due to work and not being able to “no-life” the game. I’ll still be sure to pvp for weeks as I get to exalted in Alterac Valley, for the healing offhand, which is the best offhand you can get for a long time. But there is nothing worse than being lower level than most and trying to quest on a pvp server. So I doubt I’ll play with that guild. They are great, and their guild leader is a streamer and super nice. They don’t allow racism and stuff like that (it’s hard to find that kind of guild in modern gaming communities). The other guild I’m thinking about is one I just found yesterday. They have a good guild name, seem mature, and welcome my class (resto druid). It’s also on a normal server, so I don’t have to worry about being killed by other players.

What in the world does this have to do with Jenny of Oldstones? Well, it’s lore from A Song of Ice and Fire that I was always mesmerized by. Most fans would know Jenny of Oldstones by the song Podrick sang in Season 8, episode 3–which also happens to be one of my favorite scenes in all of Season 8. I like that scene around the fire when everyone was drinking wine and Jaimie knighted Ser Brienne. The version of the song below switches from Podrick singing it to the version by Florence and the Machine. Another version is here.

The song is real to the lore of Jenny of Oldstones in the book, but also speaks largely of the past, of ghosts, of love. There’s a sense, as we know from the Ghost of High Heart, that songs bring life. Travelers come to the ghost because she can foretell the future, and in one scene, she demands Tom of Sevenstreams sing her “Jenny’s Song” as payment for future prophesies. We know from the first book in the series that dead men sing no songs. Songs and stories are so important, just like Tyrion said at the end of the GoT series:

What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There’s nothing more powerful in the world than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. And who has a better story than Bran the Broken?… Who’s better to lead us into the future?

I like the character Jenny, though she had a small reference in both the book and screen adapation. She was a commoner, with roots from the First Men (and some theorize from the Children of the Forest) who married Duncan Targaryen against his parents’ wishes, as they had a royal wife in mind rather than allowing marriage for real love. Locals considered her “wild”. She wore flowers in her hair, for instance. She was also friends with the woods witch, known as the Ghost of High Heart, who had been a child of the forest. “Jenny’s Song” really paints her more than the books do. She danced through the halls, danced with ghosts and ones who loved her the most. Sometimes she couldn’t remember their names. They’d spin her on old stones and spun away all her sorrow and pain, from winter to summer, and again and again. Til the walls crumbled and fell. It’s such a simple song of life, happiness, and the memory of old times–which is kind of cyclic. It’s my favorite lore, outside the Children of the Forest, because it encapsulates so much in one song and a few references–just to a kind of wild women who was close to nature and who was made fun of and thought to be peasant-like or non-important. Maybe that kind of lore I identify with.

Not that I’m some big RP person, but my name in Classic will allude to this character somehow. I will play a druid, which is the closest-to-nature character you can play, at least on the alliance side. It’s the highest character I have played in retail WoW, but haven’t really played retail in years. The featured image is my druid at level 110, transmogged with some older gear.

I know that the normal readers of my blog are like “huh”. What is this nerd stuff? Well that’s part of me, and I’ll probably write more of it in the future.

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