The day after he returned from the Wall , Ned invited his Lord Father and siblings to meet the she wolf after breaking their fast. They are very excited to meet the her, even Lord Father cracked a smile . As they made their way towards the Godswood with some raw meat, the man from the Neck, Berek, waited at gates to Godswood. On seeing them he bowed his head to Lord Father and said," Lord Stark, I believe I might be of some assistance in your present endeavour, we do not have much time , we must hurry, it is about to begin."
" Is that so? What is about to begin?"
"Why, the birthing of pups of course", he replied smiling.
At that news all of them increased their pace. And arrived near Heart tree just in time to witness birth of the first pup, a small grey furred thing with black streaks and the second followed , a small pup with Iron grey fur, the moment the second pup is born something clicked in Eddards mind. It was followed by another pup, this one very light grey almost white and the last one with almost midnight black color fur.
The Mother wolf exhausted, curled around the pups all the while keeping an eye on the humans. As Eddard took a step toward the Mother wolf , she growled a warning.
"Leave her be for now, it is just her protective instincts kicking in. Leave the food you brought here, Lord Eddard. Lord Stark, you and your two eldest and I should speak about my mission in Winterfell as soon as possible", Berek said , smiling all the while.
" Ned do as he says", Lord Father ordered before turning to Berek saying, " We will speak immediately follow me to my solar", then he spoke to Lya and Ben,"You two will return to your lessons and you will not return here without my presence, is that understood?", they nodded in answer and we returned to castle proper. Father ordered all gates to Godswood locked and no one to enter until his say so.
Once Father , Brandon, Berek and Ned entered the solar, Father turned to Berek and ordered in a tone that brokered no argument ,"Start speaking"
To that Berek bowed and replied, " As you might have heard Lord Stark some crannogmen have the gift of greensight, this is true. But what is not known outside the Neck is that we count some wargs among our number too. I know these names invoke distrust easily, but keep an open mind untill I finish explaining. These are magics are not same magics of dragonlords of Valyria , Shadowbinders of Asshai and Undying of Qarth. Those magics fall in the category of blood and sacrificial magic. Greensight and Warging have always been magics of Westeros , magics of Children of the Forest, magics of Old Gods, First Men have gained them through breeding with Children Of The Forest. While greensight has less misconceptions about it than Warging there are a few. For example having Greensight does not mean that person is a Greenseer. A Greenseer is something different, something greater. The Greendreams do give visions of future , but they are only visions of possible future not the absolute future, and most of the visions are not really clear cut and often are in metaphor. Warging and skinchanging are not the same thing . While warging is a real power , skinchanging is a bastardized misconception of Warging, skinchanging indicates that a person , a skinchanger can transform into an animal and then turn back into a human, that is downright ridiculous and impossible to do with warging. Transforming a person into something else is a one way transformation and requires a horrifying amount of power and that amount of power requires horrific sacrifices, the kind once employed in Old Valyria, still practiced on a smaller scale in Asshai . "
As Bran and Ned listened with rapt attention and awe on their faces, their Lord Father cut in a cold tone, " This all well and good, but it doesn't explain your purpose here"
" I am getting to that Lord Stark, you see these power have tiers. Lowest among them is Greensight, Middle one would be Warging and Highest tier is a Greenseer. You see sometimes a crannogmen will come down with a fever, they burn up and fall asleep for days on end, they go through unspeakable torment while unconscious, most die, but those who survive will have Greensight, for a long long time we thought that this was a test of Old Gods and those who survived were blessed with Greensight, but two hundred years ago a crannogmen who attended Citadel but came back before speaking his maesters vows decided to study this phenomenon and he posited a theory . The fever crannogmen fall to is just another disease among innumerable diseases out there in the World , it is just that some crannogmen are vulnerable to it and they fall ill, of those who as fallen ill some have magic in them, those who have magic have better constitution than those who don't, so when someone with magic falls ill their body activates their magic in a desperate bid for survival, if they have enough of it they survive. Even if they have survived, they have suffered under a deadly illness and that leaves a mark on their bodies, which results in a weak constitution for rest of their lives and a weak body results in poor control of their gift, so they suffer seizures when they recieves prophetic visions out of their control and Greendreams. Anyone who had a close brush with death and latent magical potential can activate their gift and recieve prophetic visions, this holds true to any ethnicity but more commonly seen in the Blood of First Men and blood of Old Valyria as they are more magically inclined bloodlines. Not all visions are absolute, as there are no true absolutes in the World, everyone has a choice and most visions are only possible futures. For convience sake we will call these people Seers. With that done, we come to Warging, now this is something special, almost one in a thousand with First Men blood have potential to be a Warg, that doesn't mean every potential will activate of course, to forcibly activate your gift you have to be near to very brink of death, This doesn't happen to many, either someone dies a quick death or they weren't in the danger of death at all. So that means to activate their gift a sufficiently powerful latent Warg needs to come into contact sufficiently powerful magical source. These sources are few and far between. On this side of the Wall only God's Eye comes to mind if asked about a place of power, of course a Warg or a Greenseer can awaken a latent Wargs gift, but to do that there has to be an already powerful awakened Warg who could recognise the potential nearby and he or she has be interested enough in it to activate it, a Greenseer can recognize the latent power and activate the power as easy as snapping their p fingers of course, but then last known Greenseer this side of the Wall was Bloodraven and he was lost beyond the Wall. After all of this, if a warg awakens then he needs to learn how to control his gifts, yes, wargs have two gifts, one is the ability to slip in to mind of an animal and control it and another is Greensight. The first one is more nuanced than just controlling animals and most Wargs who have prophetic visions have them in the form of Greendreams, as they have more power than Seers and not suffer any siezures usually. Due to misconceptions about Seers, and metaphorical nature of these Greendreams most Wargs dismiss these prophetic dreams as normal dreams and don't bother to remember them, and there is a hierarchy of power in Wargs too. Wargs are more common Beyond the Wall due to abundance of magic in the land there. And finally we have Greenseers , one in a thousand Wargs have potential to be a Greenseer, but problem with Greenseer is different from other powers mentioned, they have too much power, not much is known about it, what is known is condensed to this: once a power of a Greenseer awakens it becomes too much, they cannot control it, they become lost in their visions or lose their minds to their animal familiars . Powers of a successful Greenseer are vast. They can control hundreds of animal familars at once, they can control nature itself, they can control their Greensight at will and navigate past through the Weirwood trees and see the history of World as if they were there. They can extend their lifespan. But to be a successful Greenseer, one had to be trained by another already successful Greenseer."
After saying this Berek lifted his hand in a sign to say stop as Lord Father was about speak, " You are about to ask what is all of this has to do with anything, It has everything to do with everything. Because Lord Stark , you are a powerful Warg, your children are even more powerful Wargs, this is so, because your Family has obsessively bred these powers into your bloodline for millennia in a quest for more and more power, and they have succeded."
At that proclamation the room descended in to silence.