Courtesy of Dark Horse, we’re offering a competition to win their 7” replica Iron Throne. Only one winner will be chosen… but for those who’ve been saddened by the fact that our previous contests have been US only, we’re pleased to announce that this competition is open to international entries. Yes, Dark Horse will ship this anywhere in the world where a postal service can reach!

How to enter? Simple! Follow us on Twitter and simply send out a tweet containing #GoTThrone. Please, one entry per account. We’ll announce the winner some time next week.

It’s adapted from material written for The World of Ice and Fire, distilled down to a narrowed focus on the titular characters… but the world book, we promise, will provide a wider picture of the conflict, and the historical figures involved in it.

The article also includes a video Pixomondo produced featuring some of its effects work on the series, which we’ve embedded below.

This week’s extra video over at our Youtube channel may be delayed a day, as we’re a little short on time for recording.

Teams of up to six will play together during this eight round event that’ll cover everything on the HBO series up to that point (a small portion of material will cover the books, but with no spoilers past season 3). It costs $5 per player, so expect team prizes of between $200 and $500. Some locations will have costume contests, but feel free to dress up either way.

Find the schedule, times and event FAQs at their Facebook event page, and good luck!

Martin provides a list of contributors and their stories, which include Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Garth Nix, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Scott Lynch, Carrie Vaughn, and many, many more. A full listing can be found below the cut.

And if that’s not enough, feel free to check out the lively conversations about the episode over at our forum, as fellow fans dissect and discuss the episode.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin shares the news and his reaction.

The second showing also added 1.27 million viewers, bringing the total who watched it on TV to 6.77 million.

Unfortunately, despite this being a propitious day—my birthday—I have fallen ill, so our video review will be delayed a couple of days, in all likelihood. Apologies!

Also of note, HBO released the preview for episode 7, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself; we’ve embedded the video in the guide page.

Below, I talk with Bryan about the episode, the introduction of new characters, his proudest moments, and much more. It’s a lengthy one but, we hope, a good one. Enjoy!

Interview

All right, thanks so much for taking the time, first off!

Now, often episodes seem to have their titles decided at the last minute—George’s episode went through a couple of different names before it was settled. Was “Kissed by Fire” always the title you preferred for your episode?

To read the rest, go to the full interview.

To start with the basics, The World of Ice and Fire, or the “Worldbook” as it often ends up being called, is a project that we have been working on together with George R.R. Martin and which is now nearing its completion after a very busy autumn and an only slightly less busy spring. The book is a companion volume to A Song of Ice and Fire which gathers previously established information about the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond) as well as fills out many of the gaps in our current knowledge with new information. There is, for example, a lot of new information about the history of Westeros, not the least about the reigns of the various Targaryen kings.

When we started Blood of Dragons MUSH, we based out storyline and our family trees on the existing canon information for our chosen time period as well as on some unpublished information from GRRM. We always knew that this unpublished information was subject to change and as such we have always maintained that if conflicting information was ever published, we would try to alter matters on the game to fit the new canon. However, we have also always said that some information may not be possible to work in as it would disrupt the game too much.

As you can guess, The World of Ice and Fire does contain new canon information that conflicts with some of our established game history and, in particular, our family trees. We will be able to work in much of this information quite smoothly—and the game will be enrichened by it as it fleshes out areas we have been hesitant to speculate on—but it is not the case for all the new details. Some will require compromises between the new canon information and what we have established as true for the game. What we have said so far is that we will be able to avoid invalidating any current PCs (this was very much a key priority for us), though some may require tweaks to their backgrounds.

However, for the time being we are left in a slightly problematic situation when it comes to new PCs. We cannot make all the necessary changes to family trees and game history at the moment; not only are we swamped with work during the airing of Game of Thrones, but naturally we are also unable to release formation from The World of Ice and Fire prior to its publication.

What this means is that the situation may be somewhat confusing for prospective players at the moment. Characters that are listed as Open may, unfortunately, be turned down because they belong to a House that will undergo extensive changes. Given this, prospective players are encouraged to check with myself (Nymeria) or Balerion before requesting a character; we are then able to provide guidance on whether their chosen character will be affected or not.

We understand that it is an added inconvenience for prospective players, but we think that everyone who is interested in this particular time period will agree that it would be a shame to not be able to work in some of the fascinating new history when the book comes out.

As HBO only provided us the first four episodes of the new season, from here on out our Game of Thrones episode guides will get update only after the initial airing. We hope to be able to get at least the analysis and book-to-screen up by the time the west coast airing is completed, but the extensive recap tends to take rather longer than that, and will probably not appear until later on Monday.

Until then, however, we’ve now posted our book to screen information on the episode guide for “Kissed by Fire”.

The most intersting item, however, was Kuhoric revealing that there’s a “George R.R. Martin original” in the works, which “may” be superhero related. Kuhoric suggests this is a departure, as previously the works they’ve published have simply been adaptations. They’ll reveal more later, but what I suspect this is is a brand new Wild Cards original comic book story, which will almost certainly be scripted by someone other than GRRM (possibly Daniel Abraham, responsible for the adaptation of Fevre Dream and the Dynamic Entertainment comic Wild Cards: Hard Call?).

To see Kuhoric’s sremarks, watch below beginning at the 2:50 mark:

... but in their generosity, HBO has also given us another contest item: a House Stark blanket, to keep you extra-warm when winter is coming. To enter, all you have to do is follow Westeros.org and tweet #GoTBlanket!

Alas, yes, contest is US only. But we’ll have some international contests quite soon!

Here’s the press release from the convention itself:

A great and long-awaited ending to an excellent episode. For our full recap, review, and book-to-screen breakdown, just go ahead to our episode guide for “And Now His Watch is Ended”.