The Small Council: Where in Westeros and Essos would you like to visit that we haven’t been?

Westeros and Essos, the two continents on which A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are set, are big places, and we have yet to see all of them. What unexplored places are you most eager to get a look at, either in the books or on the show?

DAN: There’s nowhere in the Game of Thrones universe I’d more like to visit than Asshai, or Asshai-by-the-Shadow, to use its longer and more ominous name. Let me clarify: when I say “visit,” I don’t mean that I want to go there myself. Frankly, it sounds terrifying, but I am intensely curious about this mysterious port city. Asshai is the birthplace of both Melisandre and Quaithe, the strange masked woman Daenerys met briefly in Qarth. With hometown heroes like that, you know something odd is up there.

Asshai looms larger in the books than it does on the show, but it’s an intriguing place regardless of where you first heard about it. Situated on Essos, far to the east of Qarth, it’s a dark, gloomy city the origins of which are lost to time. Although the city walls are big enough to contain King’s Landing several times over, the population isn’t very big, the people all wear masks, there are no children, and the fish are deformed and blind. It’s all kinds of messed up, basically.

Asshai is situated at the base of a mountainous region called the Shadowlands, which is where Dany’s three dragon eggs came from. I don’t expect that we’ll ever visit Asshai, on either the books or in the show, but bits of info like that make it sound like there are answers to some pressing questions there, if any of the characters thought to look. George R.R. Martin is very good at filling his story with small details that suggest bigger things are at work. Asshai is one of the more curious details he’s included, and whether we ever see it up close or not, it plays a small but vital role in making his world seem as rich as it does.

ANI: I want to go to Highgarden.

I mean, who *wouldn’t* want to go to Highgarden? Sansa wanted to go to Highgarden. (Sensible child!) Whenever Margaery and Olenna talk about it, it sounds like a wonderful, relaxing place, certainly in comparison to King’s Landing. It’s nice and southerly in it’s location, so that whole “summer snow” thing that one had to put up with in Winterfell never happens. It’s not a coastal city, but it is located along a river known as the Mander, so there’s a water-fueled breeze to keep one cool in the heat. And then there’s the castle itself, parts of which date back to the Age of Heroes. Described in the novels as a tiered, walled castle, it is full of the gardens that give the place its name. Also included are groves, fountains, and a famous labyrinth that lies between the outer and middle walls, made of briars, that one could lose themselves in for hours.

But beyond the landscape and the gardens, everything Margaery and Olenna mention about Highgarden makes it sound like one of the cultural capitals of Westeros, and I’m not just talking about the feminist backchannels that teach women how to rise to power despite the strong patriarchy they’ve been born into. Musicians of all stripes flock to Highgraden, perhaps to be inspired, perhaps because it’s where the money is, perhaps a combination of both. The Tyrells may be down on their luck now, but both Margaery and Loras have an urban sophistication to them that the Lannisters cannot really match.

It is said that, unlike other fantasy worlds, Westeros is a place where most people familiar with it would not choose to live, unlike say Middle Earth, or Randland, or the futuristic universes of Star Trek and Star Wars. In most cases, I would agree. Life in Westeros is nasty, brutish, and short for many people. But if I had to live anywhere, I would make it Highgarden. I hope sooner or later to visit there, either on the page or on the show.

RAZOR: I want to see The Lands of Always Winter, specifically the place where the White Walker took Craster’s baby to be transformed into an Other by the Night’s King. And, while we did get a brief glimpse of the home of the Others, I want…no, I need to see more. The Lands of Always Winter are said to be unexplored, and they lie beyond the northernmost wildling kingdom, the land of the Thenns (north of the Frostfangs). The wildlings tell tales that the White Walkers come from this land in the farthest reaches of the North, but they are believed to be just that—tales—as they have little actual knowledge of that area. In the Lands of Always Winter, it is said to snow even in the summer.

The mystique surrounding the Others/White Walkers and their army of wights has always fascinated me. I’ve always wanted to see their home, to see if they have a structured society with cities and such. I also want to know what happens to all those wights when the Night’s King isn’t using them to slaughter the living. Do they just fall to the ground, get buried by the ice and snow, and wait to be summoned by their master when the moment hits him? These are the little details that I need answers to, and according to George R.R. Martin, we will get to see more of The Land of Always Winter, in the next book, The Winds of Winter.

CAMERON: With the show’s focus having shifted between Starks and Lannisters so often, I think it’s only fair we eventually get to go to Casterly Rock. The place that you’re from really does have an impact on who you are; we’ve seen firsthand the conditions in which the Starks grew up, but we’ve yet to see that palace of privilege and wealth from whence Cersei, Jaime, Tyrion, and Tywin all came. Plus, The World of Ice and Fire describes the Westerlands as a place “where half-hidden doors in the sides of wooded hills open onto labyrinthine caves that wend their way through darkness to reveal unimaginable wonders and vast treasures deep beneath the earth,” and I gotta say, that sounds pretty fucking cool to me. Martin has already said we’ll be visiting the Rock in the books eventually, but the show is clearly no longer following lock-step with him, so there’s always the chance we get to see it on-screen sooner. Like, before A Dream of Spring. Hopefully.

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• Published on 10/09/2015 at 5:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/09/2015 at 5:41 PM CDT