Men of the Night's Watch
The Wall is a massive wall of ice that stretches across the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms, separating it from the wild lands beyond. It extends from the Frostfangs mountain range in the west to the Bay of Seals in the east.
The Wall is one of the nine Wonders Made by Man in the book written by Lomas Longstrider.
The Wall was reputedly created over 8,000 years prior to the present setting by Brandon the Builder after the Long Night to defend the realms of man from the wildlings and Others. Approximately 300 miles in length and 700 feet in height, the Wall is protected by the Night’s Watch and according to some, ancient spells and sorcery. Supposedly, Brandon the Builder had placed his foundations along the heights wherever possible. Several mentions in the text suggest that the Wall was much smaller at the time, having been built upon by the Night’s Watch builders, who quarried huge blocks of ice from frozen lakes in the haunted forest and dragged them south to the Wall higher, raising it over the centuries to its present size. However, the severely reduced Night’s Watch at the present time is limited to maintenance duty. A total of nineteen fortresses have been built along the Wall though only five, The Shadow Tower, Greygaurd, Castle Black, The Long Barrow and Eastwatch-by-the-sea are occupied.
The Wall stretches for 300 miles and is approximately 700 feet tall, It is made of solid ice and stone, and can be seen for miles in the distance which seems grey or blue depending on weather. The top is wide enough for a dozen mounted knights to ride abreast and is thicker at the base.[According to myth, There are old spells woven into it, to strengthen it and keep creatures of a magical nature from passing it, such as the Others.
The Wall is straight from Castle Black to Eastwatch-by-the-sea, but runs like a snake between Castle Black and the Shadow Tower.
The Wall has no gates anywhere, simply a few tunnels cut through it that are barred at several points by heavy iron bars secured by massive chains that must be unlocked. They sealed with ice and stone wherever castles have been abandoned or in times of danger.
The Night’s Watch permits the forest to come no closer than half a mile to the Wall. However, over the decades, the forest has crept back the places where abandoned the abandoned castles stand. The top of the wall is studded with catapults and cranes. The galleys of Eastwatch patrol the Bay of Seals in part to catch smugglers who bypass the wall through the sea and trade weapons to the wildlings and to the west the mountains and deep river Gorge, make the terrain impassable for all but small groups of raiders.
The Night’s Watch raised nineteen castles to guarded the hundred leagues of the Wall, however they had never manned more than seventeen at one time. Over the last three hundred years, as the manpower of the Watch has dropped, most of these castles have been abandoned, “the ghost castles” as some have come to call them.
The full list of Wall castles from west to east is:
- The Shadow Tower+
- Sentinel Stand
- Hoarfrost Hill
- The Nightfort
- Deep Lake^
- Castle Black+
- Sable Hall^
- The Long Barrow+
- The Torches
+ In use
^ Scheduled for rebuild
The Wall provides a tremendous tactical advantage to its defenders, enabling a small group to hold off a much larger force. Defenders are generally beyond the range of bow shot or catapult and in turn rely on archery, catapult and dropped objects to deter an assault. In particular, barrels containing rocks frozen in ice are effective in disbursing a mass charge. Attackers must rely on one of two tactics, a direct assault on one of the few well-defended gates, or scaling the Wall in small groups and attacking a gate from the rear. The gates have been designed with features such as murder holes and limited access that make them difficult to force. In an extreme case, gates can be filled with rock and ice, thus becoming as impervious as any other part of the wall. Scaling the Wall involves similar difficulties. A team of determined climbers can reach the top, but only if undetected by defenders, who can easily knock them off with dropped objects or archery. According to legend, the Wall is vulnerable to the Horn of Joramun.