The transcript from George R.R. Martin’s webchat with Empire has been released. Read what he has to say about Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, and beware of significant spoilers.

In the Empire chat with fans, Martin reveals that his favourite House is Stark, because, “After all, it all began with the Starks.”

He also has a very detailed answer to why so many characters in the series get hand injuries:

Hand injuries were very common in the Middle Ages. When you fight with swords and axes and do a lot of hand labour, you get a lot of hand injuries. In fact, even leaving out the swords and axes you get a lot of hand injuries. There are other touches of realism; my characters who fight in repeated battles in these books tend to get scars. They lose noses and ears and become disfigured, and that’s a consequence of those battles. That’s where the icon of the Scarred Warrior comes from. Every time you go into a fight you risk emerging a little less pretty than when you went in.

Moving into spoiler territory, Martin also addresses the Red Wedding and killing off point-of-view characters:

It is difficult to kill off a viewpoint character in particular. But on the other hand, I love creating new characters, as you can tell by the number that I create. Sometimes when I create a new character, even a very minor character, I have all these ideas about them, and it’s almost as if I could write a whole story about them. Even a character that comes in for a short scene, I want him to be as fleshed as he can be, a real human being, even if it’s just one character. […] Sometimes all it takes is a single word or a single line for a minor character, and suddenly he emerges as a real person before fading back into the background.

On how he plans to finish the series with only two books left:

Two BIG books. 1500 manuscript pages each – that’s 3000 pages. I think I have a good shot. And you know, if I really get pressed, I’ve already established that red comet. I can just have it hit Westeros and wipe out all life.

Read the full transcript for much more of this here at Empire!