Filhos da Floresta
Os Filhos da Floresta, também chamadaos de Crianças da Floresta, ou simplesmente crianças, são uma misteriosa raça não-humana que originalmente habitava o continente de Westeros, muito antes da chegada dos Primeiros Homens na Era da Aurora, há mais de 12 mil anos.
Cultura
Pouco se sabe sobre as crianças. São um povo mágico e misterioso que não tem sido vistosLittle is known about the children. They are a mysterious and magical people who have not been seen by humans for thousands of years. Tales describe them as diminutive humanoid creatures, dark and beautiful, at their tallest no larger than children. The giants call them woh dak nag gram ('little squirrel people'). They call themselves in the True Tongue those who sing the songs of the earth. [1]
The children did not use metal, weave cloth or build cities; instead they lived off the land, using stone implements, wearing bark leg-bindings and shirts of woven leaves, dwelling in caves, crannogs, and hidden tree villages. Males and females both hunted side by side. They were a people with a deep connection to the land.[2] The children wielded obsidian weapons and bows in battle, but also used powerful magic.
Legends say the children of the forest were gifted with supernatural powers and magic; having power over the beasts of the wood, the ability to wear an animal’s skin, and the skill to create music so beautiful as to bring tears to the eyes of any who heard it, and the greensight ability (although the Maesters believe that the greensight was not magic, simply another kind of knowledge). It was the children who carved the faces on the weirwoods to keep watch over the woods.[3] They believe that their wisdom had something to do with the faces in the trees [3] The children of the forest believed that the weirwood trees were the Gods, and when they died they became a part of them.[4]
Appearance
They were smaller than men with nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots. They had large ears that could hear things that no man could hear.
They usually had large eyes, great golden cat's eyes, that could see down passages where a boy's eyes saw only blackness. They have vertical, slit-like pupils; this trait is responsible for improved night vision and typically associated with a nocturnal lifestyle in such creatures as cats (the Children's eyes are described in A Dance With Dragons as resembling cats' eyes) and many species of snakes, including nearly all vipers (despite Doran Martell's reference to his brother Oberyn's "viper eyes," however, the Red Viper is never described as sharing this feature with the Children of the Forest). A few had green or red eyes; these had the gift of greensight and were known as greenseers.
Their hands had only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claw instead of nails.[5] The children were slight, quick, and graceful.
History
It is unknown for how long the children lived alone in Westeros, nor where they themselves came from. Eventually about 12,000 years ago, they came in contact with the First Men, the first outsiders. These invaders brought with them bronze, great leathern shields, and the first horses and their own gods. Burning the great Weirwoods as they came, leading to war between the two.
The two races fought a desperate war for dominance, the children used their magic to shatter the Arm of Dorne, the land-bridge through which the first men came, in a futile attempt to end the invasion and later flooded the Neck, legend has it that the children called upon their gods from the Children's Tower to send the hammer of the waters to smash the Neck, but it was not enough to stop the advance of the First Men. Eventually they fought one another to a standstill. The two races agreed to peaceful coexistence and signed the Pact on the Isle of Faces, granting the open lands to humanity and the forests to the Children.
The Pact lasted for four thousand years before the enigmatic Others invaded from the uttermost north, bringing death and destruction to both races, during an extended period of winter known as The Long Night, the children of the forest joined with the First Men, to fight against the Others in the War for the Dawn. Eventually the Others were driven back into the Lands of Always Winter.
The children of the forest taught the worship of the Old Gods to the First Men, but this was largely supplanted in the South by the Faith of the Seven after the Andal Invasion. Relations between the children and humans grew distant over the years, until they ceased altogether. By the time of Aegon's Landing, humans had not seen the children for thousands of years.[2]
After the War for the Dawn, the First Men and the children of the forest lived in relative peace, but in these years, the children of the forest began their slow withdrawal from the lands of men, retreating deeper into their forests and beyond the Wall.
During the Age of Heroes it was also recorded by the Night's Watch that the children of the forest gave the black brothers a hundred obsidian daggers every year.[6]
Existência
Apesar do povo de Westeros acreditar que os filhos da floresta estão extintos, alguns ainda vivem no mundo dos homens. Um escasso remanescente de sua população está localizado no extremo norte da Muralha, num sistema de cavernas sob uma colina; a entrada é uma fenda guardada na vertente da colina.
The caves are timeless, vast, silent. They are home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extend far below the hollow hill. The children of the forest live with whom they refer to as the Last Greenseer. In the caves there are passages that go deep, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Leaf tells Bran Stark that even the children of the forest have not explored them all, even though they have lived there for a thousand thousand man-years. Bran realises that they are indeed singers, he hears them singing. They sing in the True Tongue so he cannot understand the words, but their voices are as pure as the winter air. [5]
Bran pergunta a Folhas onde o resto das crianças estão, ela responde:
| “ | Foram para dentro da terra. Para dentro das pedras, para dentro das árvores. Antes de os Primeiros Homens chegarem, toda esta terra aque vós chamais Westeros era para nós um lar, mas mesmo nesses tempos éra-mos poucos. Os deuses deram-nos vidas longas mas não um grande número, para não sobrepovoarmos o mundo como os veados sobrepovoarão uma floresta em que não existirem lobos para os caçar. Isso foi na aurora dos dias, quando o nosso Sol ia nascendo. Agora está a pôr-se, e esta é a nossa longa queda. Os gigantes também já quase desapareceram, esses que foram a nossa desgraça e os nossos irmãos. Os grandes leões dos montes ocidentais foram mortos, os unicórnios estão praticamente extintos, os mamutes reduziram-se a algumas centenas. Os lobos gigantes perdurarão mais do que todos nós, mas a sua hora também chegará. No mundo que os homens criaram não há lugar para eles, nem para nós.[5] | ” |
Filhos da Floresta conhecidos
Referências
- ↑ A Dança dos Dragões, Capítulo 13, Bran.
- ↑ 2,0 2,1 A Guerra dos Tronos, Capítulo 66, Bran.
- ↑ 3,0 3,1 A Fúria dos Reis, Capítulo 28, Bran.
- ↑ A Dança dos Dragões, Capítulo 36, Daenerys.
- ↑ 5,0 5,1 5,2 A Dança dos Dragões, Capítulo 34, Bran.
- ↑ O Festim dos Corvos, Capítulo 5, Samwell.
Nota: Esta página utiliza conteúdo da A Wiki Of Ice And Fire. O conteúdo original está aqui em Children of the Forest. A lista de autores pode ser vista no histórico da página.