The black brothers who hold the Wall against the cold and whatever waits beyond it — their vow word for word, how the order is ordered, every castle along the ice, and the men who have commanded it across eight thousand years.
The Night's Watch oath
The words are spoken before a heart tree by those who keep the old gods, or in a sept by those who keep the new; the meaning does not change. A man who says them is a black brother until he dies. There is no pardon, no release, and — for a deserter — no mercy: the penalty is death.
Night gathers, and now my watch begins.It shall not end until my death.I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.I shall live and die at my post.I am the sword in the darkness.I am the watcher on the walls.I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.
SourcesA Game of Thrones, Jon VI
Eight thousand years on the Wall
I
Raised against the dark
When the Long Night ended and the Others were driven back into the cold, the men who had fought them did not lay down their arms. Legend holds that Brandon the Builder raised the Wall — seven hundred feet of ice from the Bay of Ice to the Bay of Seals — and that the sworn brotherhood was founded to hold it, that the dark might never come again unwatched.
For thousands of years the Watch was an honorable calling. Younger sons and landless knights took the black willingly; kings sent gifts, and the North sent men. In those days the order could put ten thousand swords upon the Wall and man near a score of castles along it.
II
The long decline
Peace and forgetting are the Watch's slow ruin. As the dread of the Others faded into a tale nurses tell, so did the order's purpose in the eyes of the realm. The southron lords ceased to send their sons, and the Wall became a dumping-ground for criminals given the choice between the block and the black.
Good Queen Alysanne flew Silverwing to the Wall in her day and, moved by what she saw, won the brotherhood the stretch of land called the Gift to sustain it — but land cannot make men. By the close of the last century the ten thousand had become a thousand, and the score of castles three: Castle Black, the Shadow Tower, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The rest stand empty, given over to rats and rot, waiting.
The ranks of the Watch
The brotherhood is divided into three orders — rangers, builders, and stewards — each with its own First, all beneath one Lord Commander chosen for life. A man is sorted by his skills, not his birth: a lordling may find himself a steward, and a poacher the deadliest ranger on the Wall.
Lord Commander
Chosen for life by a vote of the whole brotherhood, styled 'my lord' though he holds no lands. He commands the Wall and answers to no king.
First Ranger
Second to the Lord Commander and captain of the rangers — the eyes and swords of the order, who ride beyond the Wall.
First Builder
Master of the builders, who keep the Wall itself, raise the castles, and tunnel the ice.
First Steward
Head of the stewards, the most numerous order, who feed, clothe, and supply the whole Watch — and without whom the rest would starve.
The rangers
The fighting men who patrol the haunted forest and hold the gates. Theirs is the most dangerous duty and the shortest lives.
The builders
Masons, miners, and carpenters who mend the Wall's slow melt and shore up the castles that still stand.
The stewards
Cooks, hunters, keepers, clerks, and servants. A steward may be a lord's squire in all but name, or a man who has never held a sword in earnest.
Recruits
The unsworn — 'crows' still black of feather but not of vow — who train under the master-at-arms until they are deemed fit to say the words.
The nineteen castles of the Wall
Nineteen castles were raised along the Wall in the order's proud years, garrisoned from the Bay of Ice in the west to the Bay of Seals in the east. Only three are manned today; the rest are abandoned or in ruin. The Nightfort, oldest and largest of them all, was left empty two centuries past when its garrison removed to Deep Lake.
1Westwatch-by-the-BridgeAbandoned
2The Shadow TowerManned
3Sentinel StandAbandoned
4GreyguardAbandoned
5StonedoorAbandoned
6Hoarfrost HillAbandoned
7IcemarkAbandoned
8The NightfortRuin
9Deep LakeAbandoned
10QueensgateAbandoned
11Castle BlackManned
12OakenshieldAbandoned
13Woodswatch-by-the-PoolAbandoned
14Sable HallAbandoned
15RimegateAbandoned
16The Long BarrowAbandoned
17The TorchesAbandoned
18GreenguardAbandoned
19Eastwatch-by-the-SeaManned
SourcesA Storm of Swords · A Dance with Dragons
Notable Lord Commanders
The rolls of the Lord Commanders are long and imperfect — nine hundred and more names, many lost, some best forgotten. A few survive in song, in warning, or in the memory of the men who served them.
The Night's King
13th, by the legendLegend
The tale — and the maesters caution it is only a tale — names a Lord Commander who took a woman with skin cold as ice for his corpse-queen, styled himself a king, and ruled the Nightfort in terror for thirteen years, until the King in the North and Joramun of the free folk brought him down together. His very name was struck from the records.
Osric Stark
of the old rolls
Said to have been chosen Lord Commander at the age of ten, and to have held the office for sixty years after — a span no other is remembered to have matched.
Runcel Hightower
of the old rolls
One of several who overreached: he tried to make the command of the Watch hereditary and pass it to his bastard son. The attempt ended, the histories say, when the son was thrown from the top of the Wall.
Rodrik Flint
of the old rolls
A Lord Commander who thought to make himself a king; the free folk are not the only ones the vow forbids to wear a crown.
Brynden Rivers, 'Bloodraven'
in 233 AC
The great bastard, sorcerer, and Hand of King Aerys I, sent to the Wall for the killing of a Blackfyre pretender under a peace banner. He rose to Lord Commander, and in 252 AC rode beyond the Wall with a ranging and was never seen to return.
Jeor Mormont, 'the Old Bear'
the 997th
Lord of Bear Island who gave up his seat to his son and took the black, and led the Watch for many hard years — a stern, canny commander who saw the peril in the north more clearly than the lords of the green lands ever did.
Jon Snow
the 998th
The youngest man to command the Watch in living memory, raised to the office in the midst of the gravest winter the order has faced in an age — with all that follows.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
What is the Night's Watch oath, word for word?
"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."
How many castles are there on the Wall?
Nineteen castles were raised along the Wall in the order's proud years, from Westwatch-by-the-Bridge in the west to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea in the east. Only three are still garrisoned: Castle Black, the Shadow Tower, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The other sixteen stand abandoned or in ruin, the greatest of them the old Nightfort.
Who is the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch?
The rolls of the Watch stretch back nearly a thousand names. Among the best-remembered are Jeor Mormont, the Old Bear, and before him the sorcerer Brynden 'Bloodraven' Rivers, who vanished on a ranging beyond the Wall. The order's number is a matter that later chapters of the chronicle keep veiled for those who would not be spoiled.
What is a King-beyond-the-Wall?
A King-beyond-the-Wall is a leader who unites the scattered free folk of the true north under a single crown — usually to lead them south, over or through the Wall, into the Seven Kingdoms. The tales name Joramun, Gendel and Gorne, Bael the Bard, and the Horned Lord; history remembers Raymun Redbeard, cut down at Long Lake. Every such crown, so far, has broken upon the ice.