Children of the Forest

The Children of the Forest are a non-human race, the original inhabitants of Westeros, who dwelt in the land long before the coming of men. Small in stature, dark and beautiful, with golden cat-like eyes and hands bearing only three fingers and a thumb, they lived in the deep woods, in caves, crannogs, and secret places, and worshipped the nameless gods of stream, stone, and tree. They named themselves, in the True Tongue, those who sing the song of earth.

They used no metal and built no great cities, hunting with weirwood bows and weapons of obsidian, what they called dragonglass. Their wise ones, the greenseers, were said to possess strange powers -- to see through the eyes of animals and birds, to look into the past and future through the weirwood trees into whose pale faces they carved their watching eyes.

History

When the First Men crossed into Westeros over the land bridge of the Arm of Dorne thousands of years ago, they brought bronze, horses, and a hunger for land, felling the sacred weirwoods. War followed between the two races. In their desperation the children are said to have worked a great magic, calling down the Hammer of the Waters to shatter the Arm of Dorne and break the land, drowning much of it beneath the sea -- though it was not enough to halt the First Men entirely.

At last the two peoples made the Pact on the Isle of Faces, dividing the land between them: the open country to men, the deep woods to the children. From that pact came a long peace and the spread of the old gods' worship among the First Men.

In a later age the children are said to have aided in raising the defenses of the realm against the Others, gifting the Night's Watch obsidian blades. But with the rise of the Andals and the Faith, the children dwindled and vanished from the lands of men, and most came to believe them long extinct.

Significance

Thought by the maesters to be no more than legend, the children of the forest endure still in hidden places beyond the Wall. Their surviving greenseers, and the old magic they keep, may yet prove vital in the war against the cold things of winter that men have forgotten how to fight.