The people of the north are nearly all descended from the First Men, who settled the land nearly
twelve thousand years ago.
Little is known of that time, but cryptic runes carved in old stones and the barrows
the First Men lived in can still be found in the barrowlands.
About eight thousand years ago, the legendary Long Night occurred when the Others invaded
from the Lands of Always Winter.
The Long Night refer to a period when a terrible darkness fell across the Known World.
It lasted a generation and laid waste through famine and terror.
According to legends, in the midst of this darkness a race of demons, called the Others,
emerged from the uttermost north of Westeros, the polar regions of the Lands of Always Winter.
They wielded razor-thin swords of ice and raised wights to fight the living.
First Men fought valiantly against them, but were driven southwards by their advance.
Legends of the north state the last hero and his companions went in search of the children
of the forest during the Long Night, thousands of years ago.
The only survivor of the company after attacks from giants, wights, and Others, the last
hero eventually reached the children and gained their assistance.
The Others were eventually halted when it was discovered that weapons made of dragonglass
could kill them.The Night's Watch then formed and won the Battle for the Dawn.
This ended the generation-long winter and sent the Others into retreat, possibly to
the Land of Always Winter.
The fate of the last hero is unknown.
Steps were taken to ensure that the people would never be caught off guard by an invasion
from the north again.
Bran the Builder the legendary founder of House Stark, supposedly raised the Wall, an
imposing structure of solid ice and magic, stretching one hundred leagues from the Gorge
in the west to the Shivering Sea in the east, cutting off the Lands of Always Winter from
the remainder of Westeros.
The Night's Watch guarded the Wall and protected the people from threats beyond the Wall.
The event defined and shaped the north, leading to the founding of the Wall, the order of
the Night's Watch, the castle of Winterfell and the first Stark Kings of Winter.
Years later Brandon the Breaker , King of Winter and Lord of Winterfell, allied with
Joramun, a King-Beyond-the-Wall, to bring down the Night's King.
Night's King lived during the Age of Heroes, not long after the Wall was complete.
He was a fearless warrior named the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and fell
in love with a woman "with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars".
He chased her and loved her though "her skin was cold as ice", and when he gave his seed
to her he gave his soul as well.
Night's King brought her back to the Nightfort and after the unholy union, he declared himself
king and her his queen, and ruled the Nightfort as his own castle for thirteen years.
During the dark years of his reign, horrific atrocities were committed, of which tales
are still told in the north.
It was not until Brandon the Breaker, the King of Winter, and Joramun, the King-Beyond-the-Wall,
joined forces that Night's King was brought down and the Night's Watch freed.
After his fall, when it was discovered that Night's King had been making sacrifices to
the Others, all records of him were destroyed and his very name was forbidden and forgotten.
It is likely this led the lords of the north to forbid the Night's Watch to construct walls
at their keeps, ensuring the keeps would always be accessible from the south.
The Starks gradually defeated rival kings, such as the Barrow Kings to their south and
the Red Kings to their east.
During the Andal invasion, the Kings of Winter stopped Andals at Moat Cailin and the eastern
shores, the only kingdom in Westeros to do so.
Moat Cailin is an ancient stronghold of the First Men on the northern edge of the great
swamp known as the Neck, in the south of the north.
Moat Cailin is one of the north's most important strongholds, though much of it now stands
in ruins.
Its importance stems from the fact that it commands the causeway, which is the safe route
for armies to travel through the swamps of the Neck.
It is an effective natural choke point which has protected the north from southron invasion
for thousands of years.
The only way for an invader to effectively bypass Moat Cailin is to win the allegiance
of House Reed and the crannogmen who know of other routes through the swamps.
These routes, such as narrow trails between the bogs and wet roads through the reeds that
only boats can follow, are not on any map.
Given the Reeds' strong ancestral ties to House Stark, they are unlikely to aid southerners
though.
Moat Cailin was once a great stronghold, with twenty towers and a great basalt curtain wall
as high as that of Winterfell's.
Today only great blocks of black basalt lay scattered about, half sunk in the ground,
where the wall once stood.
The wooden keep rotted away a thousand years past and three remaining towers out of the
fabled twenty are green with moss.
The remaining three towers command the causeway from all sides and enemies must pass between
them.
Attackers would have to face constant fire from the other towers should they attempt
to attack any one tower, wading through chest deep water and crossing a moat.
• The Children's Tower is tall and slender.
It has only half of the crenelations of its crown.
• The Gatehouse Tower is the only tower which still stands straight, even retaining
some of the walls around it.
• The Drunkard's Tower is so named due to its great lean.
It stands where the south and west walls once met.
Raised by the ancient First Men, it is claimed that Moat Cailin has defended against southern
invasions for ten thousand years.
According to myth, the children of the forest attempted to use Moat Cailin to hold back
the flood of invading First Men.
When that failed due to the humans' superior numbers, the children attempted to shatter
the Neck by working powerful magics from the Children's Tower and separate the north from
the south in the same manner they shattered the Arm of Dorne.
The children failed and only succeeded in flooding it, however, creating bogs and swamps.
The Marsh Kings and their crannogmen held Moat Cailin, sometimes with the assistance
of the Barrow Kings, Red Kings, and Kings of Winter, against all attacks from the south.
The swampy terrain was enough to prevent Moat Cailin from falling in the Andal invasion.
It was a key defense of the north against which the Andal armies threw themselves time
after time with no success.
The Kings of Winter from House Stark eventually defeated the Marsh Kings, adding Moat Cailin
to the realm of Winterfell.
The three remaining towers are more than capable of defending the passage to the south, provided
that they are fully manned.
King Jon Stark founded the Wolf's Den at the mouth of the White Knife after driving out
sea raiders.
His son, Rickard Stark, conquered the Neck from the Marsh King and married his daughter.
King Rodrik Stark is said to have won Bear Island from the ironborn in a wrestling match.
Two thousand years ago the north warred with the Vale of Arryn after the Rape of the Three
Sisters, with the Arryns eventually gaining control of the islands in this War Across
the Water.
The Starks led the north to war during Aegon's Conquest.
However, after the Field of Fire, where Targaryen dragons killed 4,000 men of the combined Lannister
and Gardener army, king Torrhen Stark knelt to Aegon the Conqueror rather than face his
dragons.
The north was included in the Seven Kingdoms and owed allegiance to the Iron Throne of
House Targaryen.
The Stark Kings in the North became the Lords of Winterfell and Wardens of the North.
Some northmen who refused to bend the knee fled into exile in Essos and formed the sellsword
company called Company of the Rose.
During the Dance of the Dragons, the Starks supported the blacks, fighting on the side
of the Rhaenyra Targaryen, against the greens, who supported Aegon II Targaryen . Lord Roderick
Dustin led two thousand northern soldiers, known as the Winter Wolves, during the war.
Lord Cregan Stark led a great host of northmen to King's Landing, where he briefly ruled
as Hand of the King for Aegon III Targaryen at the end of the Dance of the Dragons during
the Hour of the Wolf that lasted six days.
The northmen composed much of the rebel forces during Robert's Rebellion, also known as the
War of the Usurper.
After King Aerys II Targaryen caused the deaths of Lord Rickard Stark and his heir, Brandon
Stark.
Their successor, Lord Eddard Stark, led armies alongside Lord Robert Baratheon, who was crowned
King Robert I.
While some say the vast north is nearly as large as the rest of the Seven Kingdoms combined,
in actuality it is roughly a third of the landmass controlled by the Iron Throne.
The region is sparsely populated, with vast wilderness, forests, pine-covered hills and
snow-capped mountains, speckled with tiny villages and holdfasts.
Its climate is cold and harsh in winter and it occasionally snows even in summer..
Once autumn is declared by the Citadel, the lords of the north store away a part of the
grain they have harvested.
How much is a matter of choice; between one fifth and one fourth seems prudent, however.
Additionally food is smoked, salted, and otherwise preserved ahead of winter.
Coastal communities depend on fish and inland ice fishing is common on the rivers and Long
Lake.
Poor harvests before winter will mean famine, however.
Most northmen are descended from the First Men, although there have been centuries of
intermarriage with the Andals who conquered south of the Neck.
The Old Tongue spoken by the First Men of antiquity has been replaced in the north by
the Common Tongue, with the earlier language now only spoken beyond the Wall.
The constant cold and the iron grip of winter set apart the northerners from the people
of the kingdoms south of the Neck.
The north's terrain and climate do not easily yield the necessities of daily life.
Northmen place less of an emphasis on courtly ritual and culture, and instead prefer hunting
and brawling.
Their tourneys are often melees and rarely feature jousting.
Guest right is treasured in the north.
Northmen have long memories, and a lord who does not seek his rightful vengeance threatens
to have his own men turn on him.
Most of the north's people still follow the old gods and their heart trees, and have little
inclination for newer religions.
There are a few houses who follow the Faith of the Seven, however, including Houses Manderly,
Wells, and Whitehill.
Due to its religious aspect, most northmen refuse to take holy orders and thus cannot
become knights, although some northern cavalry are knights who still follow the old gods
instead of the Seven.
Most knights of the north live in the region's southern lands, such as White Harbor and the
barrowlands.
North's military strength is about equal to that of the Vale of Arryn, and Dorne.
During Aegon's Conquest, King Torrhen Stark raised an army of thirty thousand men.
Nearly twenty thousand can be raised on short notice near the start of autumn, while thousands
more might be raised from more distant houses, such as the northern mountain clans, if more
time is allowed.
The people of the north must be vigilant against wildlings who manage to bypass the Wall.
Sometimes the raids of the wildlings are especially threatening, because of the unification of
the wildling clans by a King Beyond the Wall, which is not a hereditary title or an absolute
position.
It is not a position of any authority except that of the person who can establish it through
persuasion and force.
For more infomation >> Jornalista Argentino«Deixem as invejas, dispan-se do número 10 e Respeitem o Ronaldo», - Duration: 13:58. 
For more infomation >> A ERVA QUE É ESQUECIDA CURA RINS, PÂNCREAS, INTESTINO, FÍGADO E É EXCELENTE PARA AS MULHERES! - Duration: 5:04. 
For more infomation >> Ángel Jacinto, el niño que se atrevió a hablar sin tapujos sobre la corrupción en México - Duration: 3:16. 
For more infomation >> Primeiramente: Fora Temer - The Truckers (Legendado) - Duration: 2:17. 
For more infomation >> Familia Flow - Meu Pensamento.Prod.Lá Fronteira (Videoclipe) - Duration: 2:45. 
For more infomation >> ¿Qué le espera a Luis Miguel en términos judiciales? - Duration: 1:05. 
For more infomation >> Comey explica por qué reveló a pocos días de elecciones que el FBI investigaba a Hillary Clinton - Duration: 3:18. 
For more infomation >> ¿Cómo adelanta el gobierno los planes migratorios que quedaron revelados en la foto de un rabino? - Duration: 2:14. 
For more infomation >> [Tuto] Crack The escapist - Duration: 1:29. 
For more infomation >> DAILY WORLD WITH GOD AND THE INFORMATION LAW HIDES A SECRET - Duration: 15:12. 
For more infomation >> Annoying Orange Plays - ROBLOX: Kart Rage - Duration: 10:09. 
For more infomation >> To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapters 20-21 - Duration: 22:11. 
For more infomation >> Your Money - Budgeting your summer vacation - Duration: 2:42. 
For more infomation >> Kissing without underwear!? - Y7W (65) English subtitles - Duration: 2:46. 
For more infomation >> Riverdale | Inside Riverdale: Anatomy of a Murder | The CW - Duration: 1:50. 
For more infomation >> One-eyed horse, Patch, to run in Derby 143 - Duration: 2:14. 
No comments:
Post a Comment