1/6/2023 0 Comments Game of thrones moat cailinWhether this means that Azor Ahai came to Westeros to fight the Others, or fought a separate enemy in Essos, is also a mystery. Essos is separated from the northern polar icecap by the Shivering Sea, suggesting that the Others had no way of crossing unfrozen water, limiting their initial invasion to the western continent. The rest of the world felt the darkness they had unleashed (or which had summoned them the cause and effect remains a mystery) but their direct fury fell first on Westeros. That Azor Ahai is of Essos is interesting, for the legends of the Others, whom some call the white walkers, claim that their stroke fell on Westeros alone. The religion of R’hllor, the Lord of Light, claims that he will return at the end of days to drive back the darkness a second time. In Asshai it is said that a great hero, Azor Ahai, slew his beloved to forge the greatest sword in the history of creation, Lightbringer, and used this blade to drive the darkness from the earth and the Others from civilised lands. In the lands of the Great Empire of the Dawn, which is now Yi Ti, it is recorded that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime. Every king of men who stood against them fell, his forces slaughtered and the bodies raised again to serve their new masters. They came from the uttermost north, out of the Lands of Always Winter beyond the northern-most valleys and peaks of the Frostfang mountains, spreading south through the Haunted Forest and into the lands that are now called the North. Pale beings of ice and cold, wielding weapons which shattered bronze of contact, the Others rode dead horses and giant ice-spiders, commanding the bodies of those they had slain to rise again and fight alongside them. This time lasted for more than a generation, where children were born and rose to adulthood never knowing anything other than cold, privation and darkness. In some parts of the world the sun dipped below the horizon and did not return. The Long Night fell across the entire world, apparently with little warning. The great darkness and cold consumed all of Westeros and reached as far south and east as Asshai at its height. What is known is that the Age of Heroes climaxed in darkness, and cold, and death. But the truth of this, of all of this, is doubtful. Great warriors such as Symeon Star-Eyes and Serwyn of the Mirror Shield are held to have fought great battles and done great deeds, from slaying dragons to rescuing princesses. In his rage he defied them to build what is Storm’s End. Durran Godsgrief took Elenei, daughter of the gods of the sea and the wind, to wife and was punished by having her and his family slain. There was also Garth Greenhand, a great warrior-king who united part of the Reach under his rule, established a great kingdom along the Mander and founded House Gardener. In the annals, the great heroes of this age included Lann the Clever, who tricked the Casterlys into abandoning Casterly Rock, the vast stone edifice on the west coast of Westeros, and took it as his own. Some of the maesters believe that this entire span of time, the Age of Heroes, is far more recent than tradition claims, and lasted a far shorter span of time. Few of these records have survived, and their reliability and age are in question. They chiselled runes into stone and occasionally tablets. The First Men did not use paper or write books. Reliable records of this time are scant, almost non-existent. But when exactly Oldtown was founded, we cannot say. We know that Battle Island, which stands in the harbour of Oldtown, was inhabited in even more ancient days, for mysterious fused blocks of black stone can be found there, which in later years became the foundations of the High Tower. The original name of the small town that took shape on the banks of the Honeywine is unknown, save that it was old when the Andals invaded. In all of Westeros in that time, only one city is known to have risen. But in truth we do not know how many kingdoms rose and fell in the earliest days, only that many kings ruled where later only seven did, and then only one. Legends speak of the Hundred Kingdoms, of a land divided into a patchwork quilt of ever-shifting petty-fiefdoms where every man who could raise a tower on a hill would call himself king. At some point in the Age of Heroes, it is said that Oldtown was founded, Moat Cailin raised, Casterly Rock inhabited and Storm’s End built. The Arm of Dorne had been destroyed, becoming the Stepstones, and the Neck was flooded as a desolate swamp. The great forests of the Dawn Age had been partially destroyed in the war against the Children of the Forest, but the land was still heavily wooded.
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