The Long Night

Some eight thousand years ago a winter came that did not end for a generation. The sun went away for years at a stretch. Whole lives were lived in the dark, and what the cold did not kill, hunger did.

Out of the far north came the Others, cold shapes with swords of ice, and the dead rose to walk with them. The children of the forest and the First Men fought them and were pushed south. In the North’s telling, a last hero went out into the dark to find the children and beg their help.

The war ended in the Battle for the Dawn. The Others were driven back into the Lands of Always Winter, the Wall was raised against their return, and the Night’s Watch was sworn to keep it. All of this comes down through songs and through septons writing thousands of years later. The First Men left only runes on stone, and some archmaesters doubt the whole of it.