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Spoilers follow for both House of the Dragon and Fire & Blood.

Between Daeron’s impostor, feeding rats to the nobles, and a falling out with Corlys, Rhaenyra’s challenges trying to govern Westeros just kept mounting in this week’s episode of House of the Dragon . But the worst omen of trouble ahead might be the warning she received from the High Septon: “Do not make an enemy of the Faith. It exhorts and comforts and binds together your people. Underestimate it at your peril.”

The High Septon also admonishes Rhaenyra when she mentions a dragon: “My gods do not deal in dragons. They are a profane magic created in darkness and pride and lust for power, for impunity. They destroy, but they do no create. There is no good that can come of them.”

The High Septon’s words appear to foreshadow the Shepherd, a key figure near the end of the Dance of the Dragons who has yet to appear on House of the Dragon . In George R.R. Martin’s Targaryen history book Fire & Blood , the Shepherd and his following ultimately wreak bloody havoc in King's Landing.

Who Is The Shepherd?

The Shepherd is analogous to John the Baptist, the desert preacher and prophet who heralded the arrival of Jesus Christ during the era of Roman-occupied Judea and Galilee.

Like John the Baptist, the Shepherd is the proverbial voice crying out in the wilderness. He is a rail-thin, one-handed old beggar in raggy clothes whose origins are disputed and whose real name remains unknown.

As war and ruin consume much of the Seven Kingdoms, this mad street prophet preaches against Queen Rhaenyra and warns about the end times. He develops a growing following among the smallfolk who have suffered so much during the Dance of the Dragons.

His disciples embrace his teachings that dragons are demons – echoing the High Septon’s damning of them as “a profane magic” – and believe his doomsday ravings. In these terrifying times where dragons breathe fire down on people and have laid waste to much of Westeros, the Shepherd’s message makes sense to the frightened and enraged smallfolk.

As the High Septon warned Rhaenyra, faith “exhorts and comforts and binds together your people.” But that faith can also be weaponized as viewers of House of the Dragon will find out if and when the series chronicles the chaos leading to the Moon of the Three Kings.

“There Are Two Religions In Westeros”

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal was coy about whether the High Septon’s warning means that fans can expect to see the Shepherd appear on the show sometime this season or during its fourth and final season .

“I think you'll just have to keep watching to find that out. But look, I mean, that is a major thread in the book and it's something that I think plays into a lot of the themes that we play with,” Condal recently told me.

“So much of what makes the Targaryens alien in this world is their relationship with the dragons, which does make them seem other and it makes them frightening and sexy, but it also makes them feel, I think, dirty and unholy to a lot of the people that grew up with a very strict sense of faith and what that means. And we're seeing that dramatized through Ormund who, as a Hightower, has a very close relationship with the Starry Sept, which is basically the Vatican City [of Westeros], which is based in Old Town. And the Septon that Rhaenyra communes with kind of echoes that sentiment. And what you really see, I think forming here is the sense that there are two religions in Westeros.”

Condal continued: “And while Alicent's family, the Hightowers, have kind of walked the line because they're not all Targaryen, they're part Hightower, part Targaryen, Rhaenyra's side of the family, Daemon particularly, is seen as all Targaryen. And I think there is this kind of othering going on that you see where, well, these are the interbred Targaryens that are more Westerosi and Aegon's a male, so maybe that's something that's a little easier for us to stomach. Yes, he has a dragon, but he's one of us, whereas those people are the others. And they've only really accepted the religion insofar as they have to in order to, just as the Romans had to accept Christianity to keep the peace with the masses. I think the Targaryens kind of keep this arm's length, tenuous relationship with the faith, but it's certainly not something that they hold to. Their gods are alive and they live in the dragon pit or the Dragonmont and they breathe fire.”

How worried do you think Rhaenyra should be about the High Septon’s warning? Let us know in the comments.

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2026 has been a big year for Game of Thrones fans, who have been treated to not one, but two official releases from the beloved fantasy franchise. Widely hailed as creator George R.R. Martin ’s favorite Game of Thrones project, the first new release of the year came all the way back in January with the premiere of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms . Consisting of only six thirty-minute episodes, the show felt like classic Game of Thrones scaled down to a much more intimate tale, which worked well enough to score a Season 2 renewal and confirmed 2027 return. Following just a few weeks ago was the highly anticipated third season of House of the Dragon , which is firing on all cylinders through its first three episodes.

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There's a relatively high chance Valve co-founder Gabe Newell and Hollywood director James Cameron are at least friendly. How do I know? They both partake in the hilariously ridiculous rich person hobby of investing in submarines.

One of the central figures behind Half-Life and Steam , Newell is already a relatively big player in ocean exploration, since he owns Inkfish, a research firm dedicated to learning about the ocean depths. He footed the bill on a new vessel known as RV6000, a 100-meter-sized project that recently started construction at a shipyard in Romania, and now he's taking his investment even further

Per Boat International , RV6000 is being put together by Vard, a Norwegian company, and once the outer hull is finished in Romania, it'll be sent to another shipyard in Norway to be finished. It's a state-of-the-art undertaking, described as "one of the most modern research vessels the world has seen" by Vard.

Here's the kicker: it's being handled by Oceanco, a manufacturer of high-end boats and the like Newell actually acquired himself last year. Let it never be said he does anything in half measures. He's following in the footsteps of James Cameron, who famously became infatuated by oceanic research while making 1997's Titanic, and is now a bona fide and highly qualified expert in the area.

The RV6000 costs €200 million (around $228 million) and now Newell's greenlit a second wave of investment, to the sum of €700,000,000 – or just shy of $800,000,000 – for the RV11000. This hulking mass comes to a total size of 162-meters, and it's expressly designed to go farther than most other deep sea vessels ever could.

The RV11000 will be able to hold 130 crew, and it's expected to follow the same pipeline as the RV6000. The latter should be finished in 2028, whereas the former is projected to be operational in 2030. Think of them when you're convincing your friend to buy a Half-Life bundle for $1 in the next Steam sale.

Uh-oh, the Steam Machine is having its own Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" moment, and Valve's lightbar codes point towards GPU failure.