Dawn Age

The Dawn Age is the most remote and obscure period in the history of Westeros, an era before written records when the continent belonged to races other than men. It is defined by what is not known as much as by what is, a time of myth and legend that later chroniclers could only glimpse through the distorting lens of oral tradition and fragmentary evidence.

Definition and Sources

The Dawn Age is the epoch that preceded the arrival of the First Men in Westeros, a time when the children of the forest and the giants were the sole inhabitants of the land. All knowledge of this era comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years after the fact, as the First Men themselves left no written language, only runes carved into rocks. The oldest histories of Westeros were composed after the Andals came, and they are filled with tales of kings who reigned for hundreds of years and knights riding around long before knighthood existed, making them deeply unreliable. Archmaesters at the Citadel question the accuracy of these accounts, acknowledging that much of what is believed about the Dawn Age, the Age of Heroes, and the Long Night is based on stories written millennia after the events they purport to describe.

Inhabitants and Culture

During the Dawn Age, the children of the forest were the dominant intelligent race in Westeros. They were a small, non-human people with nut-brown skin dappled with paler spots, large ears, and great golden cat's eyes. Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails. They called themselves "those who sing the song of earth" in the True Tongue, a language no human could speak. The children had no books, ink, parchment, or written language; instead, they had the weirwood trees, which they believed were the old gods. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered all their songs, spells, histories, and prayers. The giants were also present, described as massive, hairy creatures with sloped shoulders, legs as large as tree trunks, and huge splayed feet, who were both the bane and the brothers of the children of the forest.

The End of the Dawn Age

The Dawn Age ended with the arrival of the First Men, who crossed a land bridge from Essos to begin their own era of Westerosi history. The children of the forest were few in number even before the coming of men, as the gods gave them long lives but not great numbers, lest they overrun the world. The First Men cut down the weirwoods, made war on the children, and eventually, after generations of conflict, made peace with them. The Pact, as it was known, gave the open lands to men and the deep forests to the children, but it marked the beginning of the long dwindling of the elder race. The Dawn Age thus receded into memory, becoming a lost world of song and shadow, known only through the red eyes of the weirwood trees and the fragmented tales of a later age.