Hardhome

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Hardhome
Town ruins
Westeros - Byound the wall.jpg
Map - Click to zoom
Location Westeros, Beyond the Wall
Destroyed 600 years ago.

Hardhome is a ruined wildling settlement that lies north beyond the Wall. It is on the tip of the peninsula Storrold's Point on the Shivering Sea.[1]

About

Hardhome sits on a sheltered bay and has natural harbour deep enough for the biggest ships afloat. Wood and stone are plentiful near there. The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and sea cows close at hand. A great cliff looms above the settlement, it is pocked with cave mouths.

Nowadays there is no shelter there for people but for the caves, dubbed the screaming caves by the men of the Night's Watch.

History

Hardhome was close to becoming the only true town north of the Wall, until the night 600 years ago (about 300 years before Aegon's Landing) when hell had swallowed it. [2] something terrible happened that night, the town may have been attacked. It's people were said to have been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on the tale one chooses believe.

The homes of the inhabitants of Hardhome were said to have burned with flames so high and hot that the watchers on the Wall far to the south were said to have thought that the sun was rising in from the north. Afterward ashes rained down on the Haunted Forest and the Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year.

Traders reported only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters chocked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement.

After that Hardhome was shunned. The wildlings never settled the site again, and rangers roaming north of the Wall told tales of the overgrown ruins of Hardhome being haunted by ghouls, demons and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood.

Recent Events

A Dance with Dragons

Mother Mole led thousands of wildlings to Hardhome after the force led by Stannis Baratheon and the Night's Watch defeated the wildling force trying to get south of the Wall. Mother Mole preached to the wildlings that they would find salvation where they once found damnation and she had a vision of ships coming to Hardhome to sail them south.[3]

Lord Commander Jon Snow sent Cotter Pyke with eleven ships from Eastwatch-by-the-sea to bring the wildlings south from Hardhome. Many ships were wrecked by storms during the voyage. When Cotter Pyke arrived at Hardhome with six ships left, the situation had grown very bad. Wildlings were eating their own dead and there were presumably wights in the forest and in the sea. Slavers had already taken some of the wildlings to Braavos, and the wildlings tried to take Storm Crow by force which cost Cotter Pyke six of his crew. Cotter Pyke sent a raven to plead help via land from Jon Snow, since traveling by the sea was far too dangerous.[4]

In Braavos Arya tells the Kindly Man that she knows why the Sealord seized the Goodheart and that the slaves on the ship are wildlings for Westeros, from a place called Hardhome. She tells him that it is an old ruined place, accursed. Arya remembers Old Nan’s tales of Hardhome.

Quotes

“Hardhome is an unholy place, it’s said. Cursed.” [2]

- Othell Yarwyck , to Jon Snow

References and Notes