>>6189946“The Children of the Forest were small to the eyes of men, but no true children,” Brennan explains. “They built no castles or market-towns, but they knew many secret arts. Skinchanging. Greensight. Healing. But, as I said, they have not been seen since the Age of Heroes. They are only a memory to us now.”
“They *were* elves, I know it!” Eva declares. “That’s what I felt when I Communed! Winterfell was built by elves!”
“I thought these spells felt familiar somehow,” you say. “No land forgets our presence easily.” You turn back to Brennan. “How do we offer our respects?”
He shows you the basics. How to kneel properly, how to give an offering of coin or incense. How to make a proper offering by smearing a drop of blood on a fabric strip and giving it to the brazier before the tree painting.
He tells more of the North’s gods and history as he does. The Long Night came thousands of years ago, when the sun hid its face for years and snows drifted fifty feet deep even in the far south. Kings shivered in their halls and peasants starved all across the land. But more terrible than the cold was the Others - demons of ice with swords that shattered iron, riding giant spiders and armies of the dead across the land to extinguish all life and warmth. Eventually it was the Night’s Watch together with Bran the Builder who fought back the Others and built the Wall to safeguard the realm. Or so the legends go.
Of their gods, the three highest are the Bear, Wolf, and Raven. The Bear, the spirit of strength of body, of independence and inner resilience, the champion of warriors. The Direwolf, the spirit of family and of hard times, of laws and of justice, the champion of lords and fathers. Raven, the spirit of wit and intellect, of craftsmen and scholars and all others who make a living with their minds as much as hands.
You’ve never been a woman of faith. You’ve made offerings to the Great Gods before on occasion - to the Changebringer as a traveller, to the All-hammer as a craftswoman, to the Archheart and Moonweaver and Starmaiden. But yours has always been a life defined by your own abilities. Yet, faith or no, the Great Gods are as real as anything in the world. And the whole world knows them. It is strange beyond words to hear of a faith truly alien to anything you’ve ever witnessed, in praise of gods who grant no miracles and answer no prayers.
“I am the Keeper of Winterfell,” Brennan says of his own role. “Men forget, so keepers must carry on our lore and the laws of gods and men. We maintain the temples and the godswoods, witness oaths, and give advice to lords and smallfolk alike. In older days we were judges too, deciding disputes between free men.”
