The Nightfort

The **Nightfort** is one of the abandoned castles of the Night's Watch along the Wall, the only one whose steps up the side of the Wall were carved into the ice. It sits between Icemark to the west and Deep Lake to the east.

## Ruins

According to maesters who served at the Nightfort, the castle was rebuilt many times over thousands of years, with only deep stone vaults remaining from its first form.

The abandoned Nightfort has broken towers and a maze of tunnels connecting its vaults and tunnels. Buildings include a bell tower, a rookery, a brewhouse, a library, a dungeon capable of holding five hundred prisoners, a bathhouse, an armory, and a forge. The rat-filled great hall only has one remaining wall. The kitchen is a stone octagon with a domed roof and contains a stepped well.

Its yards have become small forests, a twisted weirwood grows through a hole in the kitchen, and there are also trees growing in the stables. The gate through the Wall is sealed with frozen stone and rubble.

### The Black Gate

The magical Black Gate is a hidden subterranean gate that allows passage to the other side of the Wall and is as old as the Wall itself. It is set deep in a wall of the well at the center of the kitchens and is made of white weirwood with a face on it. The face is old, pale, shrunken, and wrinkled with white eyes. The door glows.

When someone approaches the Black Gate, the eyes open. They are white and blind, and then the door asks, "Who are you?" A man of the Night's Watch must repeat a part of his vow, "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. I am the shield that guards the realms of men." The door will open then, saying, "Then pass." The door's lips open wider and wider still until nothing remains but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles.

## History

The Nightfort was the largest castle on the Wall, and the oldest, being twice as old as Castle Black. Chronicles from the Nightfort described the ancient war at Sea Dragon Point of the Kings of Winter, the Starks of Winterfell, against the Warg King and the children of the forest.

The Nightfort is remembered in scary stories of the north dating back thousands of years. It was there that the Night's King reigned before his name was wiped from the memory of man, and where the Rat Cook served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie. It is where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint was raped and murdered, and where King Sherrit called down his curse of the Andals of old. The Nightfort is where apprentice boys faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes saw hellhounds fight, and where Mad Axe walked the yards and climbed the towers to butcher his brothers in the dark. Some stories are described in Archmaester Harmune's *Watchers on the Wall.*

Three hundred years before Aegon's Conquest, the commanders of the Nightfort and Snowgate went to war with each other. Eventually, both lost their heads to the Stark in Winterfell. At some point rangers from the Nightfort sealed the tunnel of Arson Iceaxe.

With the dwindling of the Night's Watch's power two centuries ago, it became three-quarters empty and too costly to maintain. When Good Queen Alysanne Targaryen suggested she pay for a new smaller castle, the Watch agreed to abandon it. The new castle, Deep Lake, was paid for by the queen's jewels and built by men that King Jaehaerys I Targaryen sent north. Once this new castle was completed seven miles east, the Nightfort was abandoned—the first of the Watch's castles to be closed—and its last brothers were reassigned to Deep Lake.