House Blackwood: Part 1 – The Time of the Tree

House Blackwood and its origins begin in the most ancient of times, when the Children of the Forest held sway, and there were fewer people, and Houses, but more Kings and Kingdoms. We explore their connection to these ancient mysteries, their great creepy weirwood and the various wars and politics that led to current times, where Blackwoods marry Starks, Targaryens and others. Find part 2 in this series here.

Blackwood’s solar was on the second floor of a cavernous timber keep. There was a fire burning in the hearth when they entered. The room was large and airy, with great beams of dark oak supporting the high ceiling. Woolen tapestries covered the walls, and a pair of wide latticework doors looked out upon the godswood. Through their thick, diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass Jaime glimpsed the gnarled limbs of the tree from which the castle took its name. It was a weirwood ancient and colossal, ten times the size of the one in the Stone Garden at Casterly Rock. This tree was bare and dead, though.

“The Brackens poisoned it,” said his host. “For a thousand years it has not shown a leaf. In another thousand it will have turned to stone, the maesters say. Weirwoods never rot.”

“And the ravens?” asked Jaime. “Where are they?”

“They come at dusk and roost all night. Hundreds of them. They cover the tree like black leaves, every limb and every branch. They have been coming for thousands of years. How or why, no man can say, yet the tree draws them every night.”

– Jaime I, ADWD

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