Difference between revisions of "Children of the Forest"

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[[File:Children of the Forest.jpg|thumb|350px|Child of the Forest, in its natural habitat]]
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#redirect [[children of the forest]]
[[File:Children of the Forest greenseers.jpg|thumb|350px|Depiction of [[Greenseer]] sing the songs of the earth]]
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[[Category:Redirect]]
 
 
The '''Children of the Forest''', sometimes referred to simply as the "children" are a mysterious non-human race that originally inhabited [[Westeros]] continent, long before the arrival of the [[First Men]] during the [[Dawn Age]], more than 12,000 years ago.
 
 
 
==Culture==
 
Much is unknown about the children. They are a mysterious and magical people who have not been seen by humans for thousands of years. Tales describe them as diminutive humanoid creatures, no larger than children at their tallest, dark and beautiful. The [[giants]] call them ''woh dak nag gram'' little squirrel people. They call themselves in the [[True Tongue]] those who ''sing the songs of the earth''. {{Ref|aDwD|13}}
 
 
 
The children did not use metal, weave cloth or build cities, instead they lived off the land, using stone implements, wearing shirts of woven leaves and bark leg-bindings, dwelling in caves, crannogs, and hidden tree villages. They were a people with a deep connection to the land.{{Ref|aGoT|66}} The children wielded [[obsidian]] weapons and bows in battle, but also used powerful [[magic]].
 
 
 
Legends say the children of the forest were gifted with supernatural powers and magic; having power over the beasts of the wood, the ability to wear an animal’s skin, and the skill to create music so beautiful as to bring tears to the eyes of any who heard it, and the [[greensight]] ability (although the [[Maesters]] believe that the greensight was not magic, simply another kind of knowledge). It was the children who carved the faces on the weirwoods to keep watch over the woods.{{Ref|aCoK|28}} They believe that their wisdom had something to do with the faces in the trees {{Ref|aCoK|28}} The children of the forest believed that the weirwood trees were the Gods, and when they died they became a part of them.{{ref|aDwD|36}}
 
 
 
==Appearance==
 
They were smaller than men with nut-brown skin and large ears. They usually had large golden eyes, but a few had green or red eyes; these had the gift of [[greensight]] to be [[greenseer]]s. They have three fingers and a thumb with sharp black claw instead of nails.{{Ref|aDwD|34}}
 
 
 
==History==
 
It is unknown for how long the children lived alone in Westeros, nor where they themselves came from. Eventually about 12,000 years ago, they came in contact with the [[First Men]], the first outsiders. These invaders brought with them bronze, great leathern shields, and the first horses and their own gods. Burning the great [[Weirwood]]s as they came, leading to [[War_of_the_First_Men_and_the_Children_of_the_Forest|war]] between the two.
 
 
 
The two races fought a desperate war for dominance, the children used their magic to shatter the [[Stepstones|Arm of Dorne]], the land-bridge through which the first men came, in a futile attempt to end the invasion and later flooded the Neck, but it was not enough to stop the advance of the First Men. Eventually they fought one another to a standstill. The two races agreed to peaceful coexistence and signed the [[Pact]] on the [[Isle of Faces]], granting the open lands to humanity and the forests to the Children.
 
 
 
The Pact lasted for four thousand years before the enigmatic [[Others]] invaded from the uttermost north, bringing death and destruction to both races, during an extended period of winter known as [[The Long Night]], the children of the forest joined with the First Men, to fight against the Others in the [[The Long Night#War for the Dawn|War for the Dawn]]. Eventually the Others were driven back into the Lands of Always Winter.
 
 
 
The children of the forest taught the worship of the Old Gods to the First Men, but this was largely supplanted in the South by the [[Faith of the Seven]] after the [[Andal|Andal  Invasion]]. Relations between the children and humans grew distant over the years, until they ceased altogether. By the time of Aegon's Landing, humans had not seen the children for thousands of years.{{Ref|aGoT|66}}
 
 
 
After the [[The Long Night#War for the Dawn|War for the Dawn]], the First Men and the children of the forest lived in relative peace, but in these years, the children of the forest began their slow withdrawal from the lands of men, retreating deeper into their forests and beyond the Wall.
 
 
 
During the [[Age of Heroes]] it was also recorded by the [[Night's Watch]] that the [[children of the forest]] gave the black brothers a hundred obsidian daggers every year.{{Ref|aFfC|5}}
 
 
 
==Existence==
 
Although people in [[Westeros]] believe the children of the forest to be extinct there are a few that still live in the world of men. A dwindling remnant of their population is located far north of the [[Wall]], in a cave system under a hill; the entrance is a warded cleft in the hillside.{{Ref|aDwD|34}}
 
 
The caves are timeless, vast, silent.  They are home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extend far below the hollow hill.  The children of the forest live with whom they refer to as ''the [[Three-eyed crow|Last Greenseer]]''. In the caves there are passages that go deep, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. [[Leaf]] tells [[Bran Stark]] that even the children of the forest have not explored them all, even though they have lived there for a thousand thousand man-years.  Bran hears them singing far below, their voices are as pure as the winter air. {{Ref|aDwD|34}} <!-- what assumed to be the True Tongue ? -->
 
 
 
==Known children of the forest==
 
*[[Leaf]]
 
*[[Ash]]
 
*[[Scales]]
 
*[[Black Knife]]
 
*[[Snowylocks]]
 
*[[Coals]]
 
 
 
==References and Notes==
 
{{References|2}}
 
 
 
[[Category:Sentient species]]
 
[[Category:Cultures]]
 
 
 
[[fr:Enfants de la forêt]]
 
[[ru:Дети Леса]]
 
[[zh:&#26862;&#26519;&#20043;&#23376;]]
 

Latest revision as of 17:55, 13 July 2016