Five Thousand Years Ago

[Mithras]

Strange things were happening five thousand years ago. But let us take from the Andal invasion which started six thousand years ago.

We can reasonably guess that the Andalization of Westeros took a very long time. We see that the Iron Islands fell to the Andals two millennia after the start of the Andal Invasion. The weirnet was strong, First Men and the CotF were more powerful and they resisted the Andals fiercely. The Andals must have crept slowly.

At one point though, the CotF saw that the Andals could not be stopped and thrown back to Essos, so it is said that they cast their magic to turn the Neck into swamps to save the North.

Though Moat Cailin is a formidable line of defense, it is not totally impregnable for a land army. And there is this fact that people can sail around them if they have the ships and invade the lands further North.

Since the Andals first landed on the Vale (crossing the Narrow Sea from Pentos to the Vale requires advanced ships, not just simple boats) and since they were able to defeat the most powerful sea nation of Westeros after two millennia passed from the beginning of their invasion, they could have easily sailed around the Neck to invade the North. Thus, turning the Neck into a swamp with some great sorcery seems like nonsense.

However;

What if we got it completely wrong? What if the magic of the CotF was cast for an entirely different purpose and turning the Neck into a swamp was only a side effect of that magic? What if that magic had global effects to the Planetos and the people living in it?

Given that the Andals were successfully stopped at the Neck, that magic should have a more formidable result than shattering the arm of Dorne, which obviously could not stop the First Men passing the sea with simple boats.

Therefore, I propose that the magic of the CotF was cast to create greyscale and the Andals were overwhelmed by it. In the North, they got sick and they soon learned to not cross there. This is similar to what happened to the Valyrians after the fall of Rhoynar Empire.

Sidenote: We have a King Sherrit at Nightfort who summoned curse upon the Andals at an unknown time.

The magic probably declined as time passed and stopped at a certain point. After generations, the Andals were divided to several rival kingdoms and it was only the Arryns that pursued the Andalization of the North. They fought the Starks for centuries but they were not powerful enough to invade the North on their own and the Starks kept them at bay.

Another interesting thing that we know about this precise era is that members of House Borrell have carried the mark (webbing between three middle fingers) for five thousand years. I think that was due to the CotF magic.

I propose that the CotF decided to grant skinchanging to certain First Men groups in order to empower them against the Andals. As a result of that magic, people showed some animalistic mutations and a remnant of that can still be seen among the Borrels. We have other Houses who resemble different animals. For example Manderlys have some connection with the walruses.

I guess the magic was cast a couple of centuries after the Andal invasion started. Probably the effects of animalization were much more severe at the time the magic was cast. I think the CotF granted some First Men the power of skinchanging and with that new power; they were able to hold the North against the Andals. It is even possible that skinchanging supplies immunity to greyscale.

Now let us go to Essos.

We have these Valyrian-Ghiscari wars five thousand years ago. Valyrians should be already a dragontaming society before crushing the Ghiscari. They should have century old dragons to defeat Ghiscari legions. Maybe even two centuries old beasts. And they should be able to have enough training with taming and using such fearsome beasts. Therefore, the time of first dragontaming should be several centuries before the fall of the Ghiscari Empire and it more or less coincides with the magic of the CotF that granted skinchanging to certain people.

Now I make a final proposition.

Around 5500 AC, skinchanging was introduced to First Men by the CotF to help them against the Andal invasion. The procedure probably involved some serious blood magic. Through Sisters, some people with the knowledge of that magic found their way to Valyria and the first dragonlord families were formed by working similar rites and sorcery.

[Stannis's Lawyer]

The Children sunk the Neck to stop the First Men.

[Gibzit]

The Andals Probably stopped invading the north after they heard about all the wierd crap they have up there, same reason why aegon didn't conquer beyond the wall

[Mithras]

The Children sunk the Neck to stop the First Men.

No. it was against the Andals the seecond time they used it.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

The Children aren't known for using blood magic. Doesn't mean they don't though.

[Archmaester Drew]

The Children sunk the Neck to stop the First Men.

Yup. From the wiki:

For roughly 2,000 years the two races fought a desperate war for dominance. The children used their magic to shatter the 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 - where legend has it that the children called upon their gods from the Children's Tower to send the hammer of the waters to smash the Neck, as they smashed the Arm of Dorne, but it was not enough to stop the advance of the First Men. 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 tried to bring the hammer of the waters down upon the Neck.^[4]

Eventually the First Men and the children 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.

:)

[oursisthefury69]

Nope, excerpt from worldbook has Rhoynar Prince Garing casting down greyscale on conquering Valyrians

[Bael's Bastard]

No. it was against the Andals the seecond time they used it.

Pretty sure there is no record of the Andals experiencing such shows of COTF magic.

[Bryanfury]

Yup. From the wiki:

:)

My issue here is that the COTF didn't build towers, the Children's tower (and Moat Cailin in general) was probably built after the First Men and the COTF made their pact.

[Agamemnon]

My issue here is that the COTF didn't build towers, the Children's tower (and Moat Cailin in general) was probably built after the First Men and the COTF made their pact.

Most likely the children took over the tower, the were trying to flood the whole neck so it would be completely inpassible, they failed at this and just left it pretty soggy but if they has succeeded why would they want to base it out of one of their own places of power if it was going to be flodded anyway?

[Mithras]

When he was not singing, Nimble Dick would talk, regaling them with tales of Crackclaw Point. Every gloomy valley had its lord, he said, the lot of them united only by their mistrust of outsiders. In their veins the blood of the First Men ran dark and strong. “The Andals tried t’ take Crackclaw, but we bled them in the valleys and drowned them in the bogs. Only what their sons couldn’t win with swords, their pretty daughters won with kisses. They married into the houses they couldn’t conquer, aye.”

The Darklyn kings of Duskendale had tried to impose their rule on Crackclaw Point; the Mootons of Maidenpool had tried as well, and later the haughty Celtigars of Crab Isle. But the Crackclaws knew their bogs and forests as no outsider could, and if hard pressed would vanish into the caverns that honeycombed their hills. When not fighting would-be conquerors, they fought each other. Their blood feuds were as deep and dark as the bogs between their hills. From time to time some champion would bring peace to the Point, but it never lasted longer than his lifetime. Lord Lucifer Hardy, he was a great one, and the Brothers Brune as well. Old Crackbones even more so, but the Crabbs were the mightiest of all. Dick still refused to believe that Brienne had never heard of Ser Clarence Crabb and his exploits.

It looks like Crackclaw Point is another place like the Neck where the Andals failed to conquer. The blood of the First Men is still strong there.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

It looks like Crackclaw Point is another place like the Neck where the Andals failed to conquer. The bloof of the First Men is still strong there.

What about Dorne? Andal presence isn't very strong there and

Elia and Arianne found some caves with carvings from the children.

I wonder if there is something there...

(I also think there is a link between the North and Greyscale. I haven't found anything yet)

[Mithras]

What about Dorne? Andal presence isn't very strong there and

Elia and Arianne found some caves with carvings from the children.

I wonder if there is something there...

(I also think there is a link between the North and Greyscale. I haven't found anything yet)

I wonder whether the desertation of Dorne was due to First Men some 10k years ago. Maybe they cut ALL the trees once there and the climate did the rest. After all, if there were CotF there, there had to be trees, lots of them. While calling the First Hammer of the Waters, the CotF should be in the vicinity and since they derive their power from trees, there should be a lot of trees besides the CotF greenseers during the Shattering of the Arm.

I agree that there might be a relationship between CotF/Greyscale/Others. TWOIAF might reveal more clues for that speculation.

[Lykos]

Yup. From the wiki:

:)

Don´t rely upon the wiki.

Pretty sure there is no record of the Andals experiencing such shows of COTF magic.

The OP made it pretty clear that the theory presented is speculation, let´s take a look at some hints.

Catelyn in Game

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin . . . or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child's wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers . . . three where there had once been twenty, if the taletellers could be believed.

The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.

Why would the children let the First Men build an immense fortification (that stops invading human armies from going north, but not in all likelyhood wood dancers who live all around it) and come to it when it´s completed and do some magic?

Here is the official history as taught by Luwin.

Bran in Game

"But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts andfarms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horrorstruck, the children went to war. The oldsongs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye."

"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces."

"The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time, the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes." ...

"So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway, the Pact endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms, yet finally there came a time, many centuries later, when other peoples crossed the narrow sea."

"The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with steel and fire and the seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their chests. The wars lasted hundreds of years, but in the end the six southron kingdoms all fell before them. Only here, where the King in the North threw back every army that tried to cross the Neck, did the rule of the First Men endure. The Andals burnt out the weirwood groves, hacked down the faces, slaughtered the children where they found them, and everywhere proclaimed the triumph of the Seven over the old gods. So the children fled north-"

So the children fled north after the Andals came. They first landed in the Vale and it would have been easy to stop them from leaving it at the Bloody Gate. And as AntZ showed in post #11 the Andals were successfully resisted for some generations at other coasts. At some point they formed at least seven kingdoms and killed the "Hammer of Justice" , who ruled up to the Neck where Moat Cailin is.

Catelyn in Storm

"Here lies Tristifer, the Fourth of His Name, King of the Rivers and the Hills." Her father had told her his story once. "He ruled from the Trident to the Neck, thousands of years before jenny and her prince, in the days when the kingdoms of the First Men were falling one after the other before the onslaught of the Andals. The Hammer of justice, they called him. He fought a hundred battles and won nine-and-ninety, or so the singers say, and when he raised this castle it was the strongest in Westeros."

She put a hand on her son's shoulder. "He died in his hundredth battle, when seven Andal kings joined forces against him. The fifth Tristifer was not his equal, and soon the kingdom was lost, and then the castle, and last of all the line. With Tristifer the Fifth died House Mudd, that had ruled the riverlands for a thousand years before the Andals came."

Sansa in Storm

There was one place where the tide came jetting up out of a blowhole to shoot thirty feet into the air, and another where someone had chiseled the seven-pointed star of the new gods upon a boulder. Petyr said that marked one of the places the Andals had landed, when they came across the sea to wrest the Vale from the First Men.

In Feast Martin starts to sow doubts about the official history, encouraging the readers to form their own opinions on the likelyhood of events.

Sam in Feast

The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights. You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes.

Asha in Feast

"On Old Wyk." confirmed Lord Rodrik. "Though I pray it is not bloody. I have been consulting Haereg's History of the Ironborn. When last the salt kings and the rock kings met in kingsmoot, Urron of Orkmont let his axemen loose among them, and Nagga s ribs turned red with gore. House Greyiron ruled unchosen for a thousand years from that dark day, until the Andals came."

Asha smiled. "And miss the first kingsmoot called in . .. how long has it been, Nuncle?"

"Four thousand years, if Haereg can be believed. Half that, if you accept Maester Denestan's arguments in Questions. ..."

Jaime in Dance

“but some of the histories were penned by their maesters and some by ours, centuries after the events that they purport to chronicle. It goes back to the Age of Heroes. The Blackwoods were kings in those days. The Brackens were petty lords, renowned for breeding horses. Rather than pay their king his just due, they used the gold their horses brought them to hire swords and cast him down.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Five hundred years before the Andals. A thousand, if the True History is to be believed. Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim that it was only two. Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend.”

I come to the conclusion that the Andals didn´t leave the Vale for quite some time and only started invading the rest of Westeros at the most four thousand years ago in a process that took several centuries. I also believe that the rise of the Valyrian Freehold about five thousand years ago had a huge impact on the following events, but I think the children didn´t try to intervene in one great magical action.

I think it was a long process of dwindling with occasional acts of resistance - shattering the Arm of Dorne - fighting the First Men - making a pact - teaching about the Old Gods - Moat Cailin to stop the Andals coming north - influencing men with green dreams - and maybe calling the Targaryens to help when Harren threatened the Isle of Faces - Bloodraven.

[Mithras]

Nice sum up, Lykos.

I also wonder whether there is an element of truth in the lies told by the Freys at merman's court. They claimed that Robb and his men transformed into werewolves and attacked them. Was that an age old Andal fear lying deep in the subconscious? Maybe the CotF granted the ability to transform into monsters to some fellow First Men societies and the webbed fingers of Borrels are one of the last remnants of that magic. Sisters acted like the border between the last hold of the First Men and the first stronghold of the Andals. It looks like their traditional power comes from the hidden rocks upon which the storms wrecked the invading ships. The storms were supposedly due to some ritualistic mating between gods. There is a lot of mention about how crabs feed on the corpses of people upon rocks or shores.

It is also highly probable that the Valyrians did similar rites to start the tradition of dragontaming and the resulting mutations seperated them from the rest of the world.

[Mithras]

BTW, I get the impression that the Andals were once slaves to the Rhoynish Empire. There are iron mines in the lands they once lived in Essos and they learned steelworking from the Rhoynar. I guess at one point, they rebelled and fled under a figurehead (Hugor Hill, the first equivalent of Moses). That must be the reason why slavery is abomination in the sight of the Seven because like the Bravoosi, the Andals were orginally escaped slaves.

Or maybe they were once second class citizens mainly working steel and iron for the Rhoynar but in time they excelled at working and using steel. They grew powerful and probably overreached themselves. The Rhoynar defeated them in battle and the salvation seemed in the sea. They fled from the powerful magic of the Rhoynar to Westeros, only to find even more powerful CotF magic against them.

[Stannis's Lawyer]

BTW, I get the impression that the Andals were once slaves to the Rhoynish Empire. There are iron mines in the lands they once lived in Essos and they learned steelworking from the Rhoynar. I guess at one point, they rebelled and fled under a figurehead (Hugor Hill, the first equivalent of Moses). That must be the reason why slavery is abomination in the sight of the Seven because like the Bravoosi, the Andals were orginally escaped slaves.

Or maybe they were once second class citizens mainly working steel and iron for the Rhoynar but in time they excelled at working and using steel. They grew powerful and probably overreached themselves. The Rhoynar defeated them in battle and the salvation seemed in the sea. They fled from the powerful magic of the Rhoynar to Westeros, only to find even more powerful CotF magic against them.

The Andals occasionally tried to conquer the Rhoynar, and had their own kings. We know this from TWOIAF

[Lykos]

Ran, our king of the Board, said a couple of years ago that the Andals left Andalos because of the Valyrians. That was before the World of Ice and Fire of course.

I´m wondering about the faith of the seven. The story of Hugor Hill that Tyrion recalls depicts the seven deities as individuals, when did they start viewing them as aspects of one god? The fanatism they displayed when they came to Westeros was probably a result of that change in their belief, but what caused this change?

[Archmaester Drew]

That's an interesting idea, but I think the Neck was smashed earlier in the Dawn Age before the Pact.

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin . . . or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child's wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers . . . three where there had once been twenty, if the taletellers could be believed.

The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.

The quote says: " where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters," not that the Children were in the tower.

I think that the hammer of the waters on the neck was also the hammer on the Iron Islands that drowned the Grey King's hall (which is actually a weirwood grove, not a sea dragon skeleton). The Marsh Kings held sway over the Neck after the Pact and before the Andals (and it wasn't a marsh until the hammer of the waters). :)

[Archmaester Drew]

I think the affinity of some First Men houses for skinchanging is due to crossbreeding with the Children in the Dawn Age after the Pact.

I also think that the climate in Dorne changed after the breaking of the Arm of Dorne, becoming more arid. This probably lead to the loss of weirwoods there. :)