Hardhome

Hardhome is a free folk settlement that lies north beyond the Wall. It is on the tip of the peninsula Storrold's Point on the Shivering Sea

## About

Hardhome sits on a sheltered bay and has natural harbour deep enough for the biggest ships afloat. Wood and stone are plentiful near there. The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and sea cows close at hand. A great cliff looms above the settlement, pocked with cave mouths.

The Night's Watch refer to the cave system above Hardhome as the "Screaming Caves" due to the high pitch sound that harsh winds make when passing through them but to the dwellers of Hardhome they're known as the Caves of Woe and are an important place for their Faith.

## History

Hardhome was close to becoming the only true town north of the Wall. Before its destruction, Maester Wyllis journeyed to Hardhome aboard a Pentoshi trader and established himself as a healer and counselor under the protection of Gorm the Wolf, one of the four chieftains who controlled the settlement, so that he may write of the local customs. However, Gorm was murdered and Wyllis, in mortal danger, fled back to Oldtown, where he wrote *Hardhome: An Account of Three Years Spent Beyond-the-Wall among Savages, Raiders, and Woods-witches*.

One night, 600 years ago (about 300 years before Aegon's Landing), Hardhome was destroyed.[2] Something terrible happened that night; the details are uncertain. Its people are said to have been carried off into slavery by slavers from across the Narrow Sea or slaughtered for meat by cannibals out of Skagos, depending on the tale one chooses believe.

The homes of the inhabitants of Hardhome were said to have burned with flames so high and hot that the watchers on the Wall far to the south thought that the sun was rising in from the north. Afterwards, ashes rained down on the haunted forest and the Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year.

Traders and a ship sent by the Night's Watch to investigate reported only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses and blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pock the great cliff that looms above the settlement, a cliff where no living man or woman could be found.

400 years after the incident a deserter from the Wall Roland "The Dread" Brune arrived at the ruins of Hardhome with a small group of men. They worked tirelessly at preparing walls surrounding the remains, they built a long house in the cente and established Roland as "King of Hardhome".

The tribes who had once populated Hardhome were long gone so Rolan reached out to the nearest tribes. The Frostspears were the first to heed the call and arrived with their navy. The Deeptusks were next, natrual stalkers and feared assassins, then followed the Whitefurs who came from the Haunted Forest. They bent the knee to King Roland and believed in him.

5 years after Roland the Dread crowned himself King of Hardhome a zealot who lived in the Caves of Woe walked out on a coldnight screaming that he had seen the gods. He told the people that Roland was a false King and that the next true King of Hardhome would infact be a Queen. The people who had followed Roland threw him into the Caves of Woe to be judged by the Gods he quickly froze to death.

The remaining deserters adopted the name the Wolfsbane Tribe and still live in Hardhome.