Lost Lore, The Long Night

Lost Lore, The Long Night.

Excerpt from the diaries of Prince Doran Nymeros Martell:

The Long Night is how the Westerosi refer to a period in history when the world was plunged into darkness and cold. During that catastrophe the dead rose from their graves to devour the living, their masters and lords were demonic beings called the Others or the White Walkers.

It is said that the Long Night ended when the Frost Demons were driven away back in the Battle for the Dawn.

There are tales of heroes and demigods who fought in this war against the dead but very little information, this era was always surrounded by mystery.

After studying the tomes of the First Men I became the greatest expert on this era in Westeros, and possibly the world.

The Long Light began eight thousand years ago, but its origin is much earlier. We have to go back in time tens of thousands of years, to the earliest known era; the Age of Dawn.

According to the information I have about the Dawn pantheon, the people of Dawn Empire believed that at first there was nothing, and from that nothingness two beings were born: The Lion of Night, also called the Father God, and the Maiden Made of Light, also called the Mother Goddess.

The Lion of Night is the god of night, darkness and death, and the Maiden Made of Light is the goddess of day, light and life.

From them were born eight gods, four pairs of twins:

The God of the Sea & The Goddess of the Water.

The God of the Skies & The Goddess of the Wind.

The God of Fire & The Goddess of the Sun.

The God of Earth & the Goddess of Nature.

From these eight were born more gods and spirits that together created the world as we know it. After several millennia the Mother Goddess felt sadness seeing the vast world that she and her descendants created, the world was huge but it was only inhabited by a dozen beings. So she used her power to create more beings to populate the planet and beautify it even more.

First she created thousands of animals, of all kinds from aquatic to aerial. Her husband, children and descendants marveled at these beings, the Father God fell in love with the felines, in particular the lions and since then it was not uncommon to see him in the form of a huge lion with black fur.

But after a while that sadness returned to the heart of the Mother Goddess, the animals only temporarily filled that void in her heart. So she decided to create something else, beings similar to her and her descendants but at the same time completely different, she created the first men and women.

Her children loved the new inhabitants of the world, they walked among them and showed them their domains with great pride.

This joy was short-lived because there was a god who did not like the new children of the Mother Goddess at all, that god was none other than the Lion of Night. From the beginning he showed great animosity towards humans. That animosity turned into a deep hatred when he saw that his wife seemed to love her new children more than him.

To prevent her husband from killing her younger children, the goddess proposed to have another child, this child would be born as a being more similar to humans than to gods and he would be the ruler of mortals.

Having a son of his as leader of those beings that he detested so much calmed the hatred of Father God. The son would become known as the God-on-Earth. After the birth of the youngest son of the first gods they created another world, a world only destined to be inhabited by gods; the Celestial Realm.

Since the creation of their own kingdom the gods often traveled between them, but they mostly stayed in their new world.

The God-on-Earth ruled over mortals for ten millennia, he founded The Great Empire of the Dawn; the utopian realm. After that ten millennia the Emperor left his empire in the hands of his son, the Pearl Emperor, and rejoined his parents in the Celestial Realm where he was crowned the God of Mortals.

The Pearl Emperor knew that as long as there was a descendant of his dynasty ruling the The Great Empire of the Dawn the world of mortals would be safe from the wrath of his grandfather, but even so he couldn't be at peace . He feared for the future of mortals because he knew that the future is not certain, anything could happen, so he had five fortresses built.

The purpose of these five fortresses would be to protect mortals from the threat of the night. The now called Five Forts are still standing in Essos, not only that but completely intact with no signs of deterioration even after more than 15,000 years. Each fortress is huge, with three hundred meter walls made of a stone dark as night (similar to the stone used by the Valyrians, there are those who believe that it was the Valyrians who built them but any historian even without knowing what I know can deny that statement as the Valyrians date to six thousand years ago while the Five Forts date to more than 15,000 years ago).

The Pearl Emperor's fears proved correct.

The Opal Emperor died after ruling the empire for just under two hundred years, his official successor was his first-born daughter; the so-called Amethyst Empress. Her government was fair and prosperous, but also short.

A few years later her younger brother, an ambitious, cruel and sadistic man usurped her. The later called Bloodstone Emperor forced the empress to see how he killed and devoured her children (he was a cannibal), after that horrible torture he kept her locked up in a cell without giving her food nor water, repeatedly the sadistic monster raped her and forced her to watch as he murdered her loyal subdits.

Nine days after her confinement, the usurper offered her the corpse of one of her husbands, he told her that if she wants to live she should eat the corpse of her beloved, she spat on his face in response.

No matter how much pain her hunger caused her, she steadfastly refused to commit such an atrocity, and after a few weeks she passed away.

The day she died, her husband's body rose, his golden hair turned white and his tanned skin pale white. His now ice blue eyes looked at the traitorous guards, those who participated in the torture that his beloved wife suffered and moved fast as the wind. After killing them he raised his hands and the traitors rose, their wounds still bleeding and their eyes changed to ice blue but they were no longer men; they were slaves to the will of the now changed consort.

He turned to where the body of his beloved lay and carried her in his arms, he left the imperial palace with his dead-slaves following him. It is said that the consort cremated the corpse of his wife and carried her ashes to the holy monument where the rulers of The Great Empire of the Dawn rest.

That was the consort's last act inspired by love, what followed was death and darkness.

The Great Empire of the Dawn fell and hundreds of millions perished.

The Lion of Night was not the only god participating in the Long Night, his wife forsaken mortals for the acts committed against her descendant and condemned the world to live without light nor heat. Various other gods sided with their parents and caused catastrophes in the mortal world, and there were others who sided with mortals.

And so a war broke out in the Celestial world.

***

Note: For this part i am doing lots of Worldbuilding. What do you think about it?

Also we did it! 80K! This is a proper novel lenght story now, and we are still in season 1 (season 2 starts in chapter 61)