Children of the forest

well today I am going to talk about some of  my Favorite Characters A song of  ice and  fire .  The  children of the forest.

In the Dawn Age of Westeros, before the coming of man and the
raising of castles and cities, there were only the Children of the Forest.





The Children of the Forest are a mysterious non-human race that were reportedly the original inhabitants of the continent of Westeros. They were already living in Westeros when the First Men migrated to the continent, 12,000 years before Robert's Rebellion.[1]
According to legend they were last seen during the Andal Invasion 6,000 years before the War of the Five Kings. In the present day, most believe that they are simply the stuff of myth and never existed at all. Even the few that do believe they once existed, such asMaester Luwin or Ned Stark, believe that they have long since gone extinct. In actual fact, some of the Children endured for a timeBeyond the Wall as one group of Children came to serve the Three-eyed Raven. This group was eventually killed during an assaulton the cave of the three-eyed raven, rendering the Children seemingly extinct.

BIOLOGY



The Children of the Forest were said to be humanoid, but when grown to adulthood they were no taller than human children. Their facial features are very rounded and soft, like a very small child. They also have disproportionately large and expressive eyes (like human babies), which are set wider in their face than would be normal for a human child of the same height.
They generally preferred to live in the depths of the forests in hidden villages, in crannogs of the swamps, or in caves. Thus they came to be known as "the Children of the Forest".
They also seem to be extremely long-lived. Given Leaf participated in the creation theNight King some eight to ten thousand years ago, their lifespans are clearly measured in millennia.


CULTURE

The Children of the Forest worshipped nature gods, the countless and nameless spirits of every tree, every rock, and every stream. Their religion devoted to the Old Gods of the Foresthad no complex temples, but according to legend it was the Children that carved faces into the sacred Weirwood trees.  These carved heart trees were the closest thing to a shrine in their religion.
The Children of the Forest weren't very technologically advanced, though they were very woodcrafty and had a great knowledge of the plants and animals of the forest. They hunted using bows made of weirwood and used blades made of Dragonglass.
The wise men of the Children of the Forest were known as "Greenseers", who are said to have had impressive powerful magic at their disposal.


The children may have lived in clans.[4] They did not use metal, weave cloth, or build cities. The children lived off the land, using stone implements, wearing bark leg-bindings and shirts of woven leaves, dwelling in caves, crannogs, and hidden tree villages. Males and females both hunted side by side[5] as wood dancers.[6] The children had no books, no ink, no parchment and no written language.[3] They were a people with a deep connection to the land.[5] The children wielded obsidian weapons and weirwood bows in battle, but also used powerful magic.[4]

Legends say the children of the forest were gifted with supernatural powers. These included having power over the beasts of the wood, the ability to wear an animal's skin, the skill to create music so beautiful as to bring tears to the eyes of any who heard it, the greensight ability (although maesters believe that the greensight was not magic, simply another kind of knowledge) and the ability to speak to the dead.[7] It was the children who carved faces on weirwoods to keep watch over the woods.[8] The children of the forest believed that the weirwood trees were gods, and when they died they became a part of them.[3] Septon Barth believed that the children could communicate from afar with ravens.[4]

It is unknown if there is a connection between the children of the forest and the Ifequevron, or "woods walkers", of northern Essos; Vaes Leisi is a ruined settlement of carved trees and haunted grottoes in the Kingdom of the Ifequevron.[9][10]



History



Background
The First Men called us 'the Children', but we were born long before them.Leaf
The Children lived in the deep woods
for untold ages.
Legend holds that the Children of the Forest ruled Westeros for thousands of years before the arrival of the first humans on the continent twelve millennia ago. They inhabited the vast primeval forests which spanned most of Westeros before humans came and began cutting them down. According to legend, the Giants also inhabited Westeros at this time, and clashed periodically with the Children. Whatever history, wars, romances, or triumphs the Children may have had in the untold centuries that they inhabited Westeros, their stories have been forgotten.
Twelve thousand years ago, the First Menfrom the eastern continent of Essos migrated to Westeros by crossing a land bridge known as the Arm of Dorne. The First Men began cutting down the Children's forests, including the sacred weirwood trees, leading them into conflict with the Children. The two races fought a desperate series of wars for dominance for the next two thousand years, during which the Children of the Forest destroyed the Arm of Dorne and flooded the Neck through the sorcery of their greenseers.
After two thousand years of violence, the Children of the Forest and the First Men fought one another to a standstill. The two races agreed to peaceful coexistence and signed the Pact on the Isle of Faces in Gods Eye lake, granting the open lands to humanity and the forests to the Children.
The Pact lasted for another two thousand years before the enigmatic White Walkers invaded from the uttermost north, bringing death and destruction to both races. The Children of the Forest allied with the First Men to drive back the White Walkers in theWar for the Dawn eight thousand years ago. After the defeat of the White Walkers, the Children, much-reduced in number, are said to have helped Bran the Builder raise the Wallwith their powerful magic to prevent the White Walkers' return.
The Children of the Forest never had a large population to begin with, and they took heavy losses in the struggle against the White Walkers, from which they never truly recovered. Over the following centuries they gradually declined throughout Westeros, until they had all but disappeared by the time theAndals invaded Westeros six thousand years ago.
The few that remained were hunted or driven off by the Andals during their conquest of the continent, believing their magic to be an abomination to their Faith of the Seven. The Andals cut down the sacred heart trees in the south (except on the Isle of Faces), but the First Men of the North withstood their advance, and continued their worship of the Old Gods centered around the remaining heart trees there. The handful of Children that survived the slaughter were said to have fled to the far north, Beyond the Wall, where the Andals would never follow them. By the time that Aegon I Targaryen conquered and united the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros three hundred years ago, there had been no contact with the Children of the Forest for thousands of years.[2]
According to the knowledge of the maesters, the Children are either extinct, or never existed in the first place and are a purely mythical race. This is disputed by the people of the North, who hold that they inherited their worship of the Old Gods from the Children of the Forest, who were real and have long since departed the realms of men.[3]
Secretly, a handful of the Children actually did survive in the lands Beyond the Wall, unseen even by the wildlings, hiding in vast underground caverns.[4]

Dawn Age


Child of the forest, in its natural habitat.

It is unknown where the children of the forest came from, nor for how long they were in their land before humans arrived. For thousands of years during the Dawn Age the children and the giants shared the landmass that later became known as Westeros.[4] The two races are believed to have sometimes fought, since Maester Kennet found a giant's barrow near Long Lake with obsidian arrowheads in the ribs.[4] The children lived throughout Westeros, from the Summer Sea to the Land of Always Winter.[4] They called Dorne the "Empty Land",[11] however, and maesters doubt that the children lived on the Iron Islands.[12]

First Men

Eventually between eight thousand and twelve thousand years ago,[6] the children came in contact with the First Men, the first outsiders. Legends of the Reach claim they were led by Garth Greenhand.[13] Crossing the Arm of Dorne, the land-bridge connecting Westeros and Essos, these invaders built permanent settlements and brought with them bronze weapons, great leathern shields, the first horses, and their own gods.[5]

The children initially welcomed the newcomers, but they disliked the First Men's harvesting of trees from forests, such as the rainwood.[14] Fearing that the children used heart trees for spying, the First Men burned and cut down the great weirwoods as they came, leading to war between the two races.[4]

For thousands of years the two races fought a desperate war for dominance.[14] The legendary Brandon of the Bloody Blade slew numerous children at Red Lake.[13] In a futile attempt to end the invasion, the children used the hammer of the waters to shatter the Arm of Dorne, creating the Broken Arm and the Stepstones.[15] The histories say that some of the First Men, the crannogmen, grew close to the children of the forest in the days when the greenseers at the Children's Tower of Moat Cailin[16][17] tried to bring the hammer of the waters down upon the Neck.[18]

Eventually the First Men and the children fought 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, who had been greatly diminished. The children taught worship of the old gods to the First Men.[14]

Age of Heroes


A greenseer singing the song of earth.

The Age of Heroes followed the Pact between the children and the First Men, four thousand years of relative peace between the races.[5] Eventually the enigmatic Others invaded from the uttermost north, bringing death and destruction to children and First Men, during an extended period of winter known as the Long Night. The children joined with the First Men, led by the last hero, to fight against the Others in the Battle for the Dawn. Eventually the Others were driven back into the Lands of Always Winter.[2] Bran the Builder, the legendary founder of House Stark, is said to have enlisted the magical aid of the children during the construction of the Wall.[4][19]

The children began their slow withdrawal from the lands of men, retreating deeper into their forests and beyond the Wall. It was recorded by the Night's Watch that the children of the forest gave the black brothers a hundred obsidian daggers every year during the Age of Heroes.[20] The free folk believe that Gendel and Gorne once mediated between rival children and giants.[4]

Children and their greenseers supported the Warg King at Sea Dragon Point, but they were defeated by the Starks of Winterfell, the Kings of Winter.[21] The Winged Knight in the Vale is said to have wed one of the children, but she died during childbirth.[22] Some legends claim that children helped Durran build the seventh castle of Storm's End.[23] Some maesters of the Citadel, such as Jellicoe, lived among the children.[24]

Andals


Children slain and weirwoods burned by Andals.

The children again warred with humans when the Andals began migrating from Andalos across the narrow sea to Westeros. Zealous in the Faith of the Seven and armed with steel, having learned of ironworking from the Rhoynar,[25] the Andals resumed the cutting down and burning of weirwoods.[26]

Children are said to have sent wolves against Andals at the White Wood.[26] The Storm King Durran XXI Durrandon formed the Weirwood Alliance with the remaining children in the stormlands against the new invaders.[27] Having seen the Andals overwhelm other kingdoms, Gwayne IV Gardener, King of the Reach, sent men to seek aid from the children, although it is unknown if any were found.[28]

A hill, now known to the Westerosi as High Heart, was sacred to the children of the forest. There the Andal king Erreg the Kinslayer cut down the children's grove of thirty-one weirwoods. High Heart is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the children who died there, where the children's magic is said to still linger.[29] True History states that the children had already abandoned the riverlands before the arrival of the Andals, however.[26]

Because of the Andals' invasion and conquest of the First Men, the old gods were largely supplanted south of the Neck by the Faith of the Seven. Moat Cailin held back the Andals from the north,[30] however, so some children fled north.[5] During the reign of Dorren Stark, King in the North, the ranger Redwyn traded with children during a journey to Lorn Point and the Frozen Shore.[31]

Relations between the children and humans grew distant over the years, until they ceased altogether. Maesters largely believe the children have been gone for hundreds[2] or thousands[32] of years, but the free folk believe they still live beyond the Wall.[5] Some scholars have suggested that children may have survived at the Isle of Faces or in the bogs of the Neck.[30] Some also theorize that the crannogmen of the Neck intermarried with the children.[33]

Jenny of Oldstones always claimed that her woods witch friend was one of the children.[34] Lord Eddard Stark taught his offspring in their youth about the Age of Heroes and the children of the forest.[35]
Season 2
Maester Luwin tells Bran Stark that many people think that magical creatures like the Children of the Forest never existed at all. Luwin tells Bran that he thinks they may have once existed in ancient times, but that they have long since gone extinct: "The dragonsare gone, the Giants are dead, and the Children of the Forest forgotten."[5]


Season 4
Leaf, one of the Children of the Forest, emerges from the cave of the Three-eyed raven to save Bran Stark and his companions from a group of wights. She leads Bran and his companions deeper into the cave as other Children peer at them from around corners, until they reach the Three-eyed raven.[6]
Season 5
After managing to kill one of the White Walkers with a dagger made of Dragonglass,Samwell Tarly reads through many of the old manuscripts at Castle Black trying to find out what makes it so special. He explains toStannis Baratheon that the only thing he's found is some mention that the Children of the Forest used to hunt with dragonglass weapons.[7]
Season 6
Bran Stark continues his training with the three-eyed raven in his cave, where the remaining Children of the Forest also gather.Meera Reed is upset that she can't help Bran and doesn't have much to do but wait, butLeaf warns her that Bran won't stay at the cave forever and in time he will need her toDuring one of his visions, Bran is shown the darkest secret of the Children: they long ago created the White Walkers from capturedFirst Men. When he awakens, he demands an explanation from Leaf, who tries to explain that they had no choice, as they were at war with humans. Later, Bran's attempts to quicken his vision quests draw the attention of the Night King, who shortly thereafter storms the cave. The Children of the Forest present put up a fight at the cave's entrance and within the cave itself, but most of them are cut down in the ensuing battle. Leaf survives to cover Bran and Meera's escape, but makes the ultimate sacrifice by allowing the wights to envelop and cut her down while she detonates an explosive weapon, destroying the last known holdout of the Children.[10] Nonetheless, additional pockets of them may survive in the wildest and most secret places of Westeros.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, legend holds that the Children of the Forest ruled Westeros for thousands of years before the arrival of the First Men from the eastern continent of Essos, some twelve millennia ago.
Within the first novel, A Game of Thrones, it is speculated by songsters in the North that the Children might survive north of the Wall, though simply because no one is entirely sure what exists in the uncharted forests beyond it. Nonetheless, the Children have not been sighted in thousands of years, either by the Night's Watch guarding the Wall or even the wildlings that live immediately north of it.
According to myth, the Children were diminutive in stature and few in number compared to humans, but formidable in battle. Their greenseers wielded powerful magics and their wood dancers were skilled warriors. It is hinted that the enigmatic green priests of the Isle of Faces in the midst of Gods Eye know some of the secrets of the Children and their ways, and others (especially in the North) may know something of their ways.
Bran Stark discovers the handful of surviving Children of the Forest hiding in a secret, vast underground cave network beyond the Wall, guided by their member known as "Leaf". She later explains to Bran that there were simply never that many of her race in the first place, even before the First Men arrived. She believes that the gods made them this way as a counter-balance to their very long lives (which can last for centuries), so they would not exhaust the resources of their lands like deer overpopulating a woods with no wolves in it until they starve to death. They only sparsely inhabited Westeros, and they took severe losses against the White Walkers from which they never really recovered. When the Andals came they killed the few Children they encountered, and the survivors secretly fled beyond the Wall, where none would follow.
The novels have never described the Children of the Forest casting fireballs the way that Leaf seems to in the Season 4 finale, but Season 6 confirms that the Children actually throw volatile projectiles rather that cast fireballs. In the book version of the scene, Leaf lights the wights on fire using a torch, by darting around and between them with amazing speed and agility.
The World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) revealed that the largest holdouts of the Children of the Forest at the time of the Andal Invasion tended to be, of course, the major remaining woodlands of Westeros south of the Wall, which are concentrated in The Stormlands (the Rainwood in the south and what would later be known as the Kingswood to the north). It was only in the Stormlands that the Children still had a population large enough to amount to any significant fighting force. They actually joined forces with the old First Men kings of House Durrandon to try to fight off the Andal invaders, a union known as the Weirwood Alliance. It was a slowly losing battle over several generations, however, and over time they could not replace their losses through gradual attrition, and dwindled away. Elsewhere, the Children also put up a determined resistance at a point in the central Riverlands some distance east of Riverrun known as High Heart - a large hill considered sacred by the Children, which was crowned with a ring of weirwood heart trees. Eventually they were defeated and the weirwoods cut down. The book also hints that the Children, or cousins of them, were once present in Essos, as the most ancient tales from the cultures of the grasslands there tell of "woods walkers" who sound suspiciously like the Children. A forest near the coast of the Shivering Sea is still referred to as "the Kingdom of the Ifequevron" by the Dothraki. Like their Westerosi counterparts, the woods walkers found their numbers reduced first by the rise of the Sarnori, and then by the sudden colonization of the Ibbenese; although the Dothraki fear that the Ifequevron might still be around, the maesters and the Ibbenese think them gone forever.
Physical appearance and comparison to elves
Although they occupy the position usually filled by Elves in other high fantasy media, George R.R. Martin has repeatedly insisted that the Children of the Forest are not simply his version of Elves, because "Elves have been done to death". While the Children are repeatedly described as "dark and beautiful" this is not in the same manner of Tolkien's Elves: the Children are described as being smaller than humans with nut-brown skin, large ears, and glowing gold eyes, slitted like a cat's. Their skin has spotted patterns, like a deer's fur. They also have 4 digit hands (3 fingers and a thumb) that end in small claws instead of primate fingernails. The Children did not weave cloth for garments, but wore shorts of woven leaves, and leg-bindings made of tree bark. They interwove vines and flowers into their hair. Their females hunted alongside their males. When Bran sees them, he thinks that at a distance they seem no older than himself or his sisters, though up close they carry an air of being far older.
Artistic depictions of the Children of the Forest in the "Complete Guide to Westeros" Season 1 Blu-ray featurettes depict them as nothing like stereotypical Elves, who usually inhabit graceful castles and are highly "civilized". Instead, the Children are depicted as being an aboriginal people adorned with totems and tattoos.
When the Children of the Forest finally appeared in the Season 4 finale of the TV series, they were played by child actors. They apparently don't have claws instead of fingernails - and appear with five fingers instead of four, contradicting both the books and artwork from the Blu-ray featurettes. Similar to how the giants in the novels are inhuman and more like depictions of a Bigfoot or Yeti, depicting the Children of the Forest as they are described in the novels would probably have required making them very expensive CGI motion-capture creations, so the TV series opted to use actors in prosthetics. However, they did attempt to push their design as non-human as possible on a TV budget, so while it isn't full motion-capture, actors playing Children do have a grid of black dots on their faces to digitally map their performance, and in the final version their facial features are pushed around to make them appear more non-human (i. e. rounding their features, making their eyes bigger, and then setting their eyes inhumanly far apart).


THE CHILDREN OF THE FOREST AND THE WHITE WALKERS



So the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers—from men—to fight men for them. We did not see that coming.

Before we get to the implications of that monster revelation though, why exactly did the children need protection in the first place? For those answers we need to go back to a time when there were no men in Westeros, during a time known as the Dawn Age.

“No one’s innocent really in this world, and there is just something really beautifully right about the idea that the great nemesis of mankind were created to protect the Children of the Forest from mankind.” – Showrunner David Benioff

The First Men came from Essos 12,000 years ago across a land bridge into what we now know as Dorne (the exact time is at best an estimate, seeing as how there are no records from then), but before their arrival it was the domain of the Children of the Forest and the giants, a world without cities or rulers where unicorns roamed the land. We don’t know where they came from or for how long they lived free of mankind (one child says “a thousand thousand” man years), but we know they worshiped unnamed gods of the earth, carved faces into sacred weirwood trees to honor them (and to see through), and used magic to fight (though they also used obsidian bows and daggers).

The children have always been both small in physical stature (the giants call them “little squirrel people,” or “woh dak nag gram” for those of you that speak the True Tongue) as well as population. Bran is told in A Dance with Dragons, “The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them.” What they lack in size though they make up in wisdom of the earth, superior power of the senses, and beautiful singing voices.

When the First Men came they did not come peacefully, battling with the children for two thousand years. The men rode horses, wielding bronze swords with shields of leather; they formed towns and built holdfasts, chopping down the sacred weirwoods. Their superior numbers and advanced technology made it so they naturally had the upper hand.

…Though not enough of an edge to defeat them. The children used their magic to break the land mass that led the First Men into Dorne, to prevent any more from crossing over. They even tried to flood The Neck to prevent them from moving further north (they failed there—though they did create the bogs and swamps the crannogmen call home to this day).

Finally—following two thousand years of fighting and bloodshed—the children and the First Men signed The Pact on the Isle of Faces, a peace treaty that ended the war and the Dawn Age. The First Men would come to adopt the nameless gods of the children (now known as the old gods), and the two races had peace for four thousand years.

This time period is known as the Age of Heroes, when the great castles of Westeros were built, legendary figures like Bran the Builder and Lann the Clever are said to have lived, and many notable families and kingdoms were formed.

It is also when The Long Night occurred, roughly 8,000 years ago (at which we already took a deeper look). The last hero, with help from the children, defeated the White Walkers (known as the Others in the books) at the Battle of the Dawn, pushing them back into the cold lands of the far north.

Something obviously doesn’t add up here, time-wise.

If the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers to help them fight against the First Men, why did the Long Night take place two thousand years after the two sides made peace? Did the children and their small population become fearful of being completely overrun by mankind, forming the White Walkers as an army that could defeat men for them, without the children having to technically break the treaty? They likely imagined they’d be able to control their new weapon, so once mankind was eliminated by a stronger, icier version of themselves, the children could feasibly do away with them and return to their lands with impunity.

…Or, could it be that the White Walkers simply took that long to get their army together? While they can raise a giant army of the undead to fight with them (those zombie soldiers are called wights), actual White Walkers—the ones that can only be defeated by obsidian glass and Valyrian steel—are few and far between. It’s possible it took the first White Walkers thousands of years to form their army of White Walkers, during which time the children and First Men had made peace.

It’s also possible some children never accepted or trusted the peace, and did it on their own. Or that the peace was only so the children could buy time, after which they would resume their war.

Which is all to say: It’s not clear yet how the timeline fits together, but it is obvious that while the children did create a new creature with a surmountable vulnerability, they lost control over it at their own peril. (Sometimes Frankenstein loses control over his monster.) So when The Long Night came, the children were facing an even greater danger—an even stronger type of man—so they had no choice but to fight back against them with the First Men. Following the defeat of the White Walkers during The Long Night, the Children of the Forest promised the Night’s Watch 100 obsidian daggers annually. Which means they clearly knew their creatures were only defeated, not eliminated.

However, it’s also possible that the Children created the White Walkers not to defeat the First Men, but to have a weapon ready for the next men that came for them. For while they had made peace with the first invaders, the world was full of many more men, and the Children may have feared that next invasion. An invasion that did come, and pushed the Children from their home for good—the Andals

Who are the Andals, then?

The Andals, with their superior steel weapons, came to Westeros from across the Narrow Sea roughly 6,000 years ago, first landing in the Vale with the Seven-Pointed Star of their religion (the new gods). This next group of conquerors ultimately finished the Children off (as far as everyone knew), even though the First Men fought the Andals, too. (The First Men only managed to hold on to the North themselves, though most of the other six kingdoms are filled with families with the blood of both the Andals and the First Men.)

Note: Some maesters think the Andal invasion was 2-4 thousand years ago, not six. Exact dates aside, at the very least the Andal invasion marked the beginning of recorded history in Westeros.

The Children retreated far north of the wall—no longer considered a part of Westeros—eventually becoming nothing more than a legend to the men and women who lived there. So they weren’t wrong in believing that mankind was their enemy. The First Men waged war on them for two thousand years, and the Andals simply finished the takeover.


Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails.

The children are smaller than humans and have nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots. They have large ears that can hear things that no man could hear.[3]

They usually have large gold and green eyes slitted like those of a cat,[1] allowing them to see in dark passages.[3] Children with mossy green or blood red eyes have the gift of greensight and are known as greenseers.[3]

Their hands have only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails.[3] The children are slight, quick, and graceful.

Recent Events

A Game of Thrones

At Winterfell, Maester Luwin tells Bran Stark of the war of the First Men and the children of the forest and the Pact.[5]

A Clash of Kings

In the library of Castle Black Samwell Tarly reads an account of Redwyn's journey beyond the Wall, during which the ranger met children of the forest, and a book about the tongue of the children.[31]

Luwin and Bran speak of greensight.[8]

A Storm of Swords

Tom of Sevenstreams tells Arya Stark how High Heart is shunned by smallfolk, who believe it haunted by children slain by Erreg the Kinslayer. Arya wonders if the ghost of High Heart is one of the children, but tom explains she is just a dwarf woman.[29]

A Dance with Dragons


Bran Stark with the children of the forest by Conor Campbell ©

Coldhands leads Bran, Hodor, and Meera and Jojen Reed north of the Wall to the cave of the three-eyed crow, whom Coldhands calls the last greenseer.[36] They are attacked by wights at the entrance, a cleft in the hillside, but they survive with the assistance of one of the children, a being who appears to be a girl child and can speak the Common Tongue.[1]

Bran and his companions discover a dwindling remnant of children live in the warded cavern. The caves are home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extend far below the hollow hill. Bran and Meera give names to the children, since they cannot speak the True Tongue. Bran hears them sing sad songs in the True Tongue which he cannot understand, but their voices are as pure as the winter air. Leaf, who saved the humans from the wights, explains that the children have not explored all of the caves, even though they have lived there for a thousand thousand man-years. [3]

Bran finds greenseers enthroned in nests of weirwood roots. The boy learns from Lord Brynden, the last greenseer, and the child Snowylocks supplies weirwood paste.[3]

Known children of the forest

• Ash
• Black Knife
• Coals
• Leaf
• Scales
• Snowylocks

Quotes

“ Bran, the children of the forest have been dead and gone for thousands of years. All that is left of them are the faces in the trees.[32]
”

– Luwin, to Bran Stark





“ They were a people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms. In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms.[37]
”

– Luwin, to Bran Stark





“ North of the Wall, things are different. That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races.[38]
”

- Osha, to Bran Stark





“ The children are gone from this world, and their wisdom with them.[8]
”

– Luwin, to Bran Stark





“ We remember the First Men in the Neck, and the children of the forest who were their friends ... but so much is forgotten, and so much we never knew.[39]
”

- Jojen Reed, to Bran Stark





“ The children of the forest are all dead. The First Men killed half of them with bronze blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron.[40]
”

- Jeor Mormont, to Samwell Tarly


“ Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer.[3]
”

- Bran Stark's thoughts





“ Bran: Where are the rest of you?
Leaf: Gone down into the earth … Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.[3]
”





“ Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sings sad songs, where men would fight and kill.[3]
”

- Bran Stark's thoughts

References and Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 13, Bran II.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History: The Long Night.
3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08  3.09 3.10 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 34, Bran III.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History: The Dawn Age.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 A Game of Thrones, Chapter 66, Bran VII.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History: The Coming of the First Men.
7. ↑ A Clash of Kings, Chapter 13, Jon II.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 A Clash of Kings, Chapter 28, Bran IV.
9. ↑ George R. R. Martin's A World of Ice and Fire.
10. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, Beyond the  Free Cities: Ib.
11. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, Dorne.
12. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Iron Islands.
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 The World of Ice and Fire, The Reach: Garth Greenhand.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 The World of Ice and Fire, The Stormlands: The Coming of the First Men.
15. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, Dorne: The  Breaking.
16. ↑ A Game of Thrones, Chapter 55, Catelyn VIII.
17. ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 20, Reek II.
18. ↑ A Clash of Kings, Chapter 50, Theon IV, p 733.
19. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Wall and Beyond: The Night's Watch.
20. ↑ A Feast for Crows, Chapter 5, Samwell I.
21. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The North: The Kings of Winter.
22. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Vale: House Arryn.
23. ↑ A Clash of Kings, Chapter 31, Catelyn III.
24. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Reach:  Oldtown.
25. ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 5, Tyrion II.
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 The World of Ice and Fire, The Riverlands.
27. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Stormlands: Andals in the Stormlands.
28. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The Reach:  Andals in the Reach.
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 A Storm of Swords, Chapter 22, Arya IV.
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History: The Arrival of the Andals.
31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 A Clash of Kings, Chapter 6, Jon I.
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 A Game of Thrones, Chapter 24, Bran IV.
33. ↑ The World of Ice and Fire, The North: The Crannogmen of the Neck.
34. ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 23, Daenerys IV.
35. ↑ A Game of Thrones, Chapter 1, Bran I.
36. ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 4, Bran I.
37. ↑ A Game of Thrones, Chapter 66, Bran VII, p 737.
38. ↑ A Game of Thrones, Chapter 66, Bran VII, p 736.
39. ↑ A Storm of Swords, Chapter 9, Bran I.
40. ↑ A Storm of Swords, Chapter 33, Samwell II, p 373.