Winterfell

Winterfell The seat of House Stark, and the ancestral home to the Kings of Winter, Winterfell is among the oldest castles in all the Seven Kingdoms. According to legend, Bran the Builder constructed the ancient holdfast, making it at least eight thousand years old. While the castle has certainly spread beyond its original foundation, with new walls, towers, and more added over the decades, Winterfell has never been conquered.

Winterfell is a grey stone labyrinth, a maze of walls and towers, of courtyards and tunnels; a sprawling fortress whose size and scope are unmatched anywhere in Westeros. The keep and buildings form the heart of two massive granite walls and a wide moat between them. The outer wall reaches eighty feet in height, while the inner wall stands more than a hundred feet tall, studded with watchtowers and sheltering those who walk the crenelated battlements.

The size of the fortress is staggering; it spreads out over hills and valleys, encompassing both woods and hot springs. The oldest parts of Winterfell have slanting halls, rooms that lean to one side or the other, and because the ground was not leveled when it was constructed, figuring out just what floor one is on can be a challenge. Covered bridges and walkways connect the various places in the castle, and staircases wind up hills or descend into the darkened depths in the shadows of the walls. Shapeless gargoyles brood over the inner bailey, cold sentries whose features have long since been erased by wind, rain, and snow

Original Keep

Crypt

The Starks maintain the ancient tradition of interring their dead in a crypt deep beneath their fortress. At the bottom of a narrow winding staircase is a long hall flanked by granite pillars. Between each pillar is the stone likeness of a deceased Stark seated on a stone throne, their backs against the sepulchers containing their remains. Overhead, the ceiling is vaulted, supported by the columns marching down its length, far longer than Winterfell itself. Some claim the crypt is but one level of many, and beneath it are the deeper vaults that house the ancient remains of the older kings. By tradition, only the kings (and lords) are interred here; the rest are buried in the lichyard above.

First Keep

A squat round tower set with weathered gargoyles, it is long neglected. In recent years, lord Rickon of Winterfell have moved the quarters to the Great Keep, which is connected to the adjacent armory by a covered bridge and overlooks the practice yard and the Maester’s Turret through high, narrow windows.

Godswood (Touchstone Site)

Winterfell’s godswood reflects the dour and contemplative personality of the Starks—it is a dark and shadowy place, yet at the same time both peaceful and calming. The trees here have grown untouched for over ten thousand years and include sentinel trees, oaks, ironwoods, hawthorns, ash, and soldier pines. The heart tree, an ancient weirwood, grows beside a dark pool; its face is long and melancholy, its eyes deep and watchful. An ancient sentinel tree of Winterfell’s godswood grows high over the wall and overhangs the armory.

Great Keep

Most activity at Winterfell takes place in the Great Hall, located adjacent to the main castle yard. This vast hall can accommodate over five hundred guests, seated at eight long rows of trestle tables, four on either side of the central aisle, and it is warmed by a great fireplace at one end. Here, too, sits the throne of Winterfell, a cold seat of stone carved with hounds and direwolves, where the ancient Kings of Winter sat and issued judgment.

Library Tower

The Library Tower is devoted entirely to books and manuscripts, and it includes a number of important works on ancient history and warfare.

Maester’s Turret

This tower houses the maester’s apartments. Cluttered and messy, it is a maze of books, tables, and chairs, with shelves holding elixirs, curious concoctions and rare ingredients lining the walls. Maester Oghan possesses a bronze Myrish lens, so he can examine the stars, and a number of charts and illustrations of his findings litter the room.

Pools

Across the godswood, just under the windows of the guest house, lay the pools. Fed by a hot spring deep beneath the castle, these pools steam and bubble day and night. The pools are ideal for bathing and relaxation, and they heat the castle.

Other Locations

Other locations at Winterfell include the bell tower, where the maester tends his ravens, the guard hall adjacent to the armory, the guest house beside three steaming pools across from the heart tree, and the broken tower—once the tallest in Winterfell—whose upper levels were shattered by lightning over a century ago. Today, the broken tower is home only to crows and sparrows. Winterfell also includes a guardhouse, kennels, gatehouses, stables, brew house, kitchens, servants’ quarters, and many other structures, including a small Sept for use by visiting southern folk. These diverse buildings are joined by a network of bridges, tunnels, and covered passages, making the place a baffling labyrinth to anyone not familiar with its layout.

Winter Town

Just outside Winterfell’s walls is Winter Town, a small community of smallfolk that support the Stark family. A market square stands just outside the castle’s gates, and muddy streets and neat rows of houses fashioned from logs and rough stone spread out in all directions. Most of the year, Winter Town is empty, but during the cold darkness of winter, folks drift in from across the countryside to take shelter here until the spring.

Economy

Dire bison, branta, woolly mammoths, as well as other game hunting inland; whaling, fishing, and lamprey hunting along the shores.

Other Details

Mastadons and Pale draft horses provide the majority of transportation in the north. Hazards include weather related white-out conditions, and quick slush; monsters including ice toads, sabre-tooth tigers, angry giants, pairs of mated megalocerosi and yeti; the frost folk or Skagosi peoples, as well as dire polar bears, boars, and wolves.

Stories passed from travelers across the wastes tell of rare glyptodons that still roam the rugged northern landscape and small flocks of Preytons that who steal the shadows of their victims before they gore them. A common fear, and slogan for the Stark family, is Winter is Coming. A grim reminder of times past when a winter that lasted a generation fell upon the people of Westeros before Bran the Builder led a group of heroes against The Night King.

Personalities

Winterfell is home to an average of two thousand individuals including the Lord of Winterfell Rickon Stark who is said to be a direct descendant to Torrhen Stark- the ‘King who Knelt’. Maester Oghan and his raven Rik Rak; Oghan who serves as an adviser, alchemist, and messenger to the Lord of Winterfell. 

There is Corban "Blackbar" Stark, the steward and seneschal who takes care of the estate and household administration including the events in the Great Hall. 

Croll Cerwyn, Chamberlain and officer of the Stark household who is responsible for the Chamber, which includes the administration of the household's budget. 

Roberd Hornwood ‘Knight of Ponds’ is the Watch Captain charged with supervising the house guard and carries out and marshals the Stark’s bannermen in times of conflict

Koryn ‘Pathfinder’ Glover who is the ranking Ranger of the north. 

Hugar Selter who functions as the local barber and Stark beast master

Harlik the Hairless who manages the cooks, porters, scullions and bakers of Winterfell. 

Then there’s Barthogan ‘Barth Blacksword’ Stark, the crippled brother to the Lord of Winterfell who opposes Rickon’s leadership at seemingly every turn- he has three children two sons who are both rangers and one daughter who is sly and can be very persuasive.