The Old Gods

Before the coming of the Andals, who with their steel swords wiped out the Children of the Forest and the First Men, the only deities venerated in the continent now known as the Seven Kingdoms were the Old Gods. They were the Children of the Forest’s gods, entities who lived in communion with nature. The First Men after their arrival in the continent were converted to their cult, and they built their cities around the little woods of Weirwood Trees, in which were carved the faces of the gods, perennially crying of crimson lymph.

Many other gods were later venerated in the Seven Kingdoms: from the Seven took by the Andals to R’hllor, Lord of Light.

Only in the North, where men are as hard as steel and remember the cold of winter which seems to have no end the Old Gods are still venerated.

The Night’s Watch take their oath in front of the Weirwood Trees, swearing to protect the earth at the south of the Wall.

By now nobody remembers the true reason why the brothers in black were born, but surely not to stop some pool of Wildings or Giants.

The gods and the Children of the Forest have protected Men to the first attack of the Others at the beginning of times, fact that remain only in the legends narrated by old nurses.

The Children of the Forest have passed away, and no one can even help Men against the Others.

Now Mance Rayder for his hunger for conquer has mined in an ancient necropolis above, in the farthest north, at Ice Claws, searching for an artifact: the Horn of Winter, capable to destroy the Wall. But doing that he has relived a sleeping evil, insatiable and cold: the Others.

The Children of the Forest had obsidian weapons, “dragonglass”, so they known how to kill the Others, and probably the gods who they venerated were conflicting with the Great Other, the evil god of darkness whom the priests of R’hllor talk so much.

But what proof have we of the powers and the existence of the Old Gods?

The Children of the Forest venerated them, and being them a pacific and sage people even their gods should be the same as them. In spite of this the gods never prevent the extermination of their protected.

Much probably  gods don’t interesting in mortal meanings, but they intervene only when the enemy is pure evil: the Others and their undead. There is no other explanation.

From what has been seen their power is strictly connected to nature and animals, and maybe direwolves were a gift of them for the princes of the North, as guardians linked, in life and death, with their masters.