Chapter 7: Chapter 6: The Seven!
With the help of the Giants and the magic of the Children of the Forest, a man now known as Brandon the Builder raised the damn thing.
It was three hundred miles in length and seven hundred feet in height, made of solid ice and stone. The top was wide enough for a dozen mounted knights to ride side by side, and is even thicker at the base.
Manning the wall was the illustrious "Night's Watch", men who gave up their lands, right to father children, and their general freedom to spend the rest of their miserable lives to defend the realm from these Others, and the wildling tribes in the North North— Balthazar smacked me with his tail every time I said that.
The last section of the book said that the Others had not been seen for eight thousand years.
But I knew that was false, or else I would not have encountered that monstrosity in the void.
For a while, Westeros was at peace, building its people back up from the aftermath of the Long Night— a full generation without being able to farm would most likely have caused people to die by the millions— and this peace lasted for thousands of years.
Until the Andals came from Andalos, with their own religion in tow and steel weapons, superior to the crude iron and bronze the First Men had. Another war was had, and the Andals eradicated entire forests of weirwood trees, killing off both the First Men and the Children of the Forest.
The First Men fought back, of course, but the Children of the Forest were thought to have gone extinct during that time— if anyone even believed in their existence in the first place. They landed in the Vale of Arryn and spread their faith and destruction across the continent, installing Septs, large buildings of worship with the seven pointed star as a symbol on their entrances.
So that was what that building was, in the Square Market.
The book went on in detail on the Andal invasion, and how each kingdom in the South fell to their rule, either to war or marriage proposal which cemented the ties between kingdoms— both barbaric garbage in my eyes.
The only kingdom that withstood their invasion was The North, with their crannog men at the Neck— a region filled with swamps and bog— and a fortress named Moat Cailin, both of which destroyed entire armies every time they showed their ugly faces.
Thus, the North was allowed to keep its practice of its faith to their own Gods of the forest, stream and stone, now popularly known as the Old Gods.
The New Gods were really only one God, with seven different avatars— kind of like how, in the Christian religion, there had been three avatars— and were named The Seven.
The first is The Father, who represents divine justice, and judges the souls of the dead.
The second is The Mother, who represents mercy, peace, fertility, and childbirth, often referred to as the strength of women.
The third is The Maiden, representing innocence, purity, love and beauty.
The fourth is The Crone, who represents wisdom and foresight.
The fifth is The Warrior, who represents strength and courage in battle.
The sixth is The Smith, who represents creation and craftsmanship.
The seventh, and final one, is The Stranger, representing death.
I supposed it made sense why the people flocked to this new religion. The Old Gods were unseen, represented by forests, streams and land— there were no outrageous services, no names; nothing about it was certain.
The Seven, on the other hand, installed their Septs everywhere. They had their own symbol, the seven pointed star. You had to appreciate the symmetry of it all. The name of the churches was Sept, which was French for Seven. There were seven gods, seven pointed stars, seven kingdoms...
Why wouldn't any backwards ass farmer believe in this tripe?
Still, history was history, despite my feelings on the matter. So, the Andals invaded, the Kingdom of the North kept the stupid blond invaders off its nuts, and life went on for a few more thousand years; until, three hundred years ago, Aegon the Conqueror came with his three dragons, and subdued all of the kingdoms, one by one, uniting them all in a war comparatively much shorter than the previous ones.
Good; shorter wars meant less reading for me.
I turned out to be wrong in that assumption.
Instead, it turned out to be even more reading material than the books covering the thousands of year before it. Kingdoms surrendering or being destroyed, instead. Loyalties exchanged, maps rewritten, a new capital rising... The rule of the Dragon Kings was absolute, it seemed.
At least, until all of the dragons died, and all of the subsequent kings went mad, one way or another, trying to reach for their former glory. One of the kings apparently drank a volatile substance called wildfire, a green substance that can burn hotter than any known material, melting even stone. The man burned to death.
Another, King Aerys II Targaryen, used wildfire to burn his enemies alive, and he ended up going too far when the Lords Stark of the North confronted him about his son.
The story went on that the King's son, Rhaegar Targaryen, abducted the current King Robert Baratheon's intended, a woman by the name of Lyanna Stark.
Lord Rickard Stark's daughter; so it was of no surprise that Lord Brandon Stark, the Heir of Winterfell, went to the capital of King's Landing to confront Rhaegar's father, King Aerys.
Brandon and his cohort were then arrested and imprisoned on charges of conspiring to kill the crown prince. Their fathers were summoned to answer for these crimes, and were summarily executed.