The Night’s Watch

The Watch was founded in the Age of Heroes, when the Others had been driven back into the far north and the Wall raised to keep them there. Its brothers wear only black. A man who joins gives up marriage, lands and children, and serves until he dies. The brothers choose their own Lord Commander, and he too serves for life.

It is divided into three orders. Rangers ride beyond the Wall into the haunted forest. Builders keep the ice and the castles. Stewards keep the stores, the horses and everything else. At its height it held seventeen castles and ten thousand men, and the children of the forest gave it a hundred daggers of dragonglass every year.

That was long ago. Northern houses still count it an honour to send a younger son, and Starks have served there; one, Osric Stark, was chosen Lord Commander at ten and held the office sixty years. But most of the men who come north now are thieves and poachers, given a choice between the Wall and the block.