House of Black and White

The House of Black and White is a temple in the Free City of Braavos in Essos, the headquarters of the secretive guild of assassins known as the Faceless Men. It is a place of death, where those weary of life come to receive a peaceful end and where the most feared killers in the world are trained.

The Temple

The House of Black and White stands on an isle at the edge of Braavos, a grim building of black and white stone with a door of weirwood and ebon, one half black and one half white. Within, a still pool offers the gift of a painless death by poisoned water to those who seek it. The temple holds statues of the death gods of many faiths, for the Faceless Men hold that all gods of death are one god, called the Many-Faced God.

The Faceless Men

The temple's servants are the Faceless Men, an order of assassins who serve the Many-Faced God by granting the gift of death. Their origins trace to the slave mines of old Valyria, where the first of them is said to have offered death to suffering slaves. They are masters of disguise, able to change their very faces, and their services command prices that can ruin kingdoms.

Arya Stark

In A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya Stark comes to the House of Black and White seeking to become one of the Faceless Men, bearing the iron coin given to her by the assassin Jaqen H'ghar. There she is trained to give up her name and her identity, serving the kindly man and the waif as she learns the order's grim arts, though she clings privately to her true self.