![]() ![]() ![]() The Reynes of Castamere made a rich system of mines, caves, and tunnels their own subterranean seat, whilst the Westerlings built the Crag above the waves. The Greenfields raised a vast timber castle called the Bower (now simply Greenfield), built entirely of weirwood. On Fair Isle, the longships of the Farmans helped defend the western coast against ironborn reavers. ![]() Amongst these are the Hawthornes, the Footes, the Brooms, and the Plumms. Many and more great houses trace their roots back to this golden age of the First Men. ![]() Yet still the men kept coming, until their farms and villages spread across the west “from salt to stone,” protected by stout motte-and-bailey forts, and later great stone castles, until the giants were no more, and the children of the forest vanished into the deep woods, the hollow hills, and the far north. Legends tell us that the fighting was bitter in those days, and many a hero suffered a cruel death at the hands of these ancient foes. Neither of these elder races proved able to withstand the First Men, who came with fire and bronze axes to cut down the forests, plough the fields, and drive roads through the hill country where the giants made their abodes. Men came here in the Dawn Age, it is said, but before them the children of the forest made their homes in the woods, whilst giants dwelled amongst the hills, where their bones can still occasionally be found. These are rich lands, temperate and fruitful, shielded by high hills to the east and south and the endless blue waters of the Sunset Sea to the west. The westerlands are a place of rugged hills and rolling plains, of misty dales and craggy shorelines, a place of blue lakes and sparkling rivers and fertile fields, of broadleaf forests that teem with game of every sort, where half-hidden doors in the sides of wooded hills open onto labyrinthine caves that wend their way through darkness to reveal unimaginable wonders and vast treasures deep beneath the earth. An abridged version of this history appeared in The World of Ice & Fire, copyright 2014 George R.R. ![]()
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