History Characters / ASongOfIceAndFireOutsiders

Savage clans who live in the Mountains of the Moon in the Vale, they hate the Arryns and rob any passing travelers. The clans include the Black Ears, Storm Crows, Burned Men, Milk Snakes, Moon Brothers, Painted Dogs, Sons of the Mist, and the Stone Crows.

* GoldenAge: The Age of Heroes ushered in after the war between men and children.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Of the Anglo-Saxons

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Of the Normans.

A clan chief of the Black Ears.

A monstrous race from the Lands of Always Winter. Eight thousand years ago they caused the Long Night, a period of time where the dead rose and attacked the living, laying waste to the world. According to legend they were driven back by Azor Ahai and locked away behind the Wall, where the Night's Watch was established to safeguard the world from their return. Though most believe the Others are simply a myth, the monsters have returned and are once again trying to plunge the world into a never-ending Winter.

* {{Hero Killer}}s
* TheHorde

* KryptoniteFactor: [[spoiler:Dragonglass, or obsidian, is the only thing currently known to kill an Other]]. This doesn’t work on wights though.

* BadassCavalry: Rode horses for the first time.

* SacredHospitality

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Of the Normans.
* KnightInShiningArmor: Introduced the concept of knighthood.

* WrittenByTheWinners: Thanks to their superior writing which supplanted the First Men's runes.

!!The Mountain Clans

[[folder:The Clans of the Mountains of the Moon]]

Savage clans who live in the Mountains of the Moon in the Vale, they hate the Arryns and rob any passing travelers. The clans include the Black Ears, Storm Crows, Burned Men, Milk Snakes, Moon Brothers, Painted Dogs, Sons of the Mist, and the Stone Crows.

* [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority Self-Mutilation Equals Authority]]: The Burned Men perform self-mutilation as a rite of passage to demonstrate their bravery. Cutting off one's nipple or finger is pretty typical. Timett took it UpToEleven by gouging out his own eye with a hot knife, which was so impressive that he was immediately promoted to warleader.
* AxCrazy: The rest of Westeros see mountain clans as this, the mountain clans see the Burned Men as this, and even the ''Burned Men'' are a little wary around Timett.
* {{Badass}}: All of the mountain clans are fierce fighters, and make travel into and out of the Vale a risky proposition for small groups or those with no weapons.
* BattleTrophy: The Black Ears tribe cuts off the ears of their captured enemies but leaves them alive to prove they do not fear retaliation.
* TheBrute: Several clans fulfill this role for Tyrion, and they are widely hated by the people of King's Landing. Shagga is the most obvious example.
* CharacterDeath: Ulf son of Umar and Conn son of Corratt are both slain at the Battle of the Green Fork.
* IAmXSonOfY: How they introduce themselves. Tyrion catches on and introduces himself as "Tyrion, son of Tywin".
* UnkemptBeauty: Conn, son of Corratt is described as "handsome if he bathed".

[[folder: Shagga]]
!!Shagga, son of Dolf
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shagga_son_of_dolf_ffg_3693.png]]

A clan chief of the Stone Crows, Shagga becomes one of Tyrion's closest allies.

* AChildShallLeadThem: of the Burned Men is described as a gaunt youth, and is not yet twenty years old when he first appears. He leads the Burned Men because he is the most {{Badass}} one there. When a Burned Man comes of age, he must burn a body part - usually a finger, toe or other expendable body part. Timett chose to put out his own eye, doing so with a red hot knife. The Burned Men were so impressed they promoted him to "Red Hand" (a war leader) on the spot.

* BigDamnHeroes: He saved Samwell & Gilly from Night's Watch deserters.

* CreepyBlueEyes

* ZombieApocalypse: During the Long Night thousands of years ago they brought one of these about, and are now currently trying to do it again in Westeros.

!!The Faceless Men

[[folder:The Guild of the Faceless Men]]

A religious society of assassins who worship the Many-Faced God, a god of death. Their headquarters is the House of Black and White in the Free City of Braavos. Their history stretches back to before the Doom of Valyria, originating in the volcanic mines of that ancient city. They now act as the top assassin guild in the known world, whose services are very hard to come by.

* AffablyEvil: They seem a pretty decent bunch considering what they are.
* AmbiguouslyEvil: At least until their true agenda (if any) is exposed, it's hard to classify them as good or evil.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Their worship of death is expressed in an unusual moral system which will readily provide this "gift" to anyone who desires it for themselves, but is very expensive when it comes to providing it to others (although it's implied that the price paid doesn't have to be financial). For instance, while the original Faceless Men lead Valyrian slaves to freedom, the initial action of the first Faceless Man was to MercyKill a slave rather than killing an abusive master.
** The second action was to help another slave kill his master, because it was the one thing he desired more than anything else, but afterwards the first Faceless Man told him that he must now serve, and that slave became the second Faceless Man.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Arguably an example of this (their white-and-black outfits indicate a tendency to think of themselves as both dark and light), as a shadowy group of death-worshipping assassins who provide euthanasia to those who wish for death. They also commit assassinations, but they only kill those who have driven others to pray (or pay) for their deaths, prefer not to kill someone they personally know, and are very strict about avoiding collateral damage.
* FaceStealer: Their means of a more potent disguise: [[spoiler: they take the faces off corpses of those who drank from the poisonous waters and use some sort of magic to take their appearances]]
* {{Glamour}}: One means of disguise.
* IndividualityIsIllegal: You can't become one of them unless you totally forsake your identity.
* MasterOfDisguise / VoluntaryShapeshifting: Their powers.
* MentorArchetype: Jaqen and the Kindly Man are both this to Arya. The latter's persona could be viewed as a conscious invocation of this trope.
* MercyKill: Will gladly provide this to anyone who desires it. Their temple has a poisonous spring that the suffering can drink from to receive painless euthanasia.
* MurderInc: They are a religious order of assassins whose two main functions are the providing of painless euthanasia and assassinations for hire which they consider a sacred rite.
* NoNameGiven: None of them have names other than Jaqen H'ghar (which is a fake persona anyway) and Arya identifies them by physical descriptors.
* ReligionOfEvil: Maybe.
* WeirdTradeUnion: An assassins' guild ''religion''.

[[folder: Jaqen H'ghar]]
!!Jaqen H'ghar
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ghar_ffg_9227.png]]
-->''"A man sees. A man hears. A man knows."''

A Faceless Man introduced as a prisoner being taken as "recruit" to the Wall, he ends up owing a debt to Arya during ''A Clash Of Kings'' and serves as an important mentor figure to Arya/impetus for her later decisions. He more than likely appears with a different face and identity in ''A Feast For Crows''.

* AffablyEvil: He's polite and charming and while a professional killer, displays no signs of sadism.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Because of his identity as a Faceless Man, he believes that saving lives necessitates BalancingDeathsBooks, and can't really be classified as good or evil.
* DeadPersonImpersonation: In ''A Feast For Crows'', he's heavily implied to be a character calling himself the Alchemist [[spoiler: and in this identity, ends up killing and taking the identity of Citadel student, Pate]].
* TheDreaded: His ex-cellmates Rorge & Biter certainly thought so.
* EvilMentor: Or, Morally Ambiguous Mentor.
* {{Foil}}: Regardless of whether the [[EpilepticTrees popular fan theory]] is true that he is also Arya's fencing teacher Syrio, he's definitely presented as a foil to him. Both men are from Braavos and serve as mentors to Arya, but Jaqen is a much more morally ambiguous figure, and his helpfulness to her is very conditional.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Played with. He ''can'', but [[spoiler: when Arya names ''him'' as the third person he must kill (see ThreeWishes below), he asks her to 'unsay' it.]]
* HitmanWithAHeart: Has some shades of this, as he seems to have some genuine affection for Arya
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Generally kills in this manner, which appears to be a Faceless Man trademark.
* MasterOfDisguise / VoluntaryShapeshifting: Comes with the Faceless Man package.
* [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Only Known by His Undercover Name]]: Jaqen H'ghar is almost definitely not the man's real name.
* PunctuationShaker: Possibly the oddest and most "fantasy" name in the series.
* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker / ThirdPersonPerson: Always refers to himself in a detached way as "A Man" rather than saying "I". Likewise, he speaks of Arya in third person as "A girl" rather than saying "You".
* ThreeWishes: After Arya saves him, Rorge, and Biter, he offers her the lives of any three people in exchange as a kind of BalancingDeathsBooks.
* VillainyDiscretionShot: FridgeLogic would suggest that he must have done something pretty horrible to end up in the Black Cells/inspire the respect and fear of monsters like Rorge and Biter.

[[folder: The Kindly Man]]
!!The Kindly Man
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_kindly_man_ffg_2518.png]]

A priest in charge of the House of Black and White in Braavos. He guides Arya Stark along the path to becoming a Faceless Man.
----
* TheAdjectivalMan
* AffablyEvil: As his sobriquet suggests, he's a quite pleasant guy, and behaves in a friendly, grandfatherly manner to Arya, and [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative treats her better than anyone has in a long while]]. He's also clearly brainwashing her into a merciless, [[LossOfIdentity identity-less assassin]].
* ConsummateLiar/ SelfProclaimedLiar: He tells Arya that the basis for disguise is learning to exercise total control over ones emotions, and that he can consciously choose to display any (seemingly sincere) emotion he wants.
* CoolOldGuy
* MentorArchetype: To Arya.
** EvilMentor
* NightmareFace: When initially trying to recruit Arya, he turns his face into a rotting skull with worms and maggots crawling around on it. Arya is completely unaffected, and actually tries to eat one of the worms on his face. The Kindly Man is extremely amused by this.
-->"No one has ever tried to eat my worm before."
* OnlyKnownByHisNickname
* {{Troll}}: When Arya first asks him if he can teach her to change her face, he tells her to puff her cheeks and stick out her tongue, and when she does, tells her, "There, your face has changed." She is not amused.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Waif]]
!!The Waif

A member of the Faceless Men who also teaches Arya how to become a Faceless Man.
----
* ConsummateLiar: Like other Faceless Men, this is an ability she has developed through training, and plays a "game" with Arya to teach her this, wherein she tells her backstory and challenges Arya to spot the lies.
* CreepyChild: Comes across as one.
* MasterPoisoner: She specializes in crafting poisons to kill her targets.
* MysteriousWaif: ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
* OlderThanTheyLook: The waif is a Faceless Man (Faceless Woman?) who is thirty-six years old but looks like a child close to Arya's age. Her body is unnaturally small because she is around dangerous poisons all the time and the face she has probably isn't her real one anyway.
[[/folder]]

!!The Others

[[folder: The Others]]
-->''"In that darkness the white walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead Horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders big as hounds..."''

A monstrous race from the Lands of Always Winter. Eight thousand years ago they caused the Long Night, a period of time where the dead rose and attacked the living, laying waste to the world. According to legend they were driven back by Azor Ahai and locked away behind the Wall, where the Night's Watch was established to safeguard the world from their return. Though most believe the Others are simply a myth, the monsters have returned and are once again trying to plunge the world into a never-ending Winter.
----
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Or at the very least, always hostile, implacable, and dangerous to mortals. [[WordOfGod Martin]] has hinted that there may be more to them than meets the eye, they can be reasoned with as shown with Craster's sons and the Children of the Forest don't fear them.
* BeautyIsBad: According to WordOfGod at least, as part of their [[TheFairFolk Sidhe]] motiff.
* BiggerBad: They serve as antagonists to the series as a whole even if most characters are unaware of their existence. The Great Other that Melisandre fears may possibly serve as one as well.
* CreepyBlueEyes
* TheDreaded: The members of the Night’s Watch are terrified of them for good reason, but the rest of Westeros only thinks of them as a myth.
* EvilIsDeathlyCold: Their bodies radiate cold, and it has been suggested that maybe they don’t just show up during winter storms, maybe they ''cause'' them. Even their weapons and armor are made of ice.
* TheFairFolk: Of the terrifyingly dangerous sort. Notably because, in their role as mankind's enemies, they resemble more the medieval version, which, as you may guess, equates them with [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demons]].
* GiantSpider: Old Nan and some of the books Samwell reads say that they had "giant ice spiders" at their disposal during the Long Night but it has yet to be confirmed if they ever existed or if the Others still have them.
* {{Hero Killer}}s
* TheHorde
* HumanoidAbomination: They look human but they have milk white skin and OccultBlueEyes.
-->'''GeorgeRRMartin''': "They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… [[TheFairFolk the Sidhe]] made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous."
* HumanSacrifice: Craster gave them his sons. This is currently the only way known to stop them from attacking you on sight. [[spoiler:Craster's wives describe the Others coming for Gilly’s son as the baby's "brothers."]]
* ImplacableMan: Stab an Other all you want, they’ll just keep getting up again and again. Wights will also keep coming unless set alight, though they at least retain damage done to them, even if the body parts cut off of them still move.
* KillItWithFire: The only way to kill a wight outside of waiting for it to decompose.
* KryptoniteFactor: [[spoiler:Dragonglass, or obsidian, is the only thing currently known to kill an Other]]. This doesn’t work on wights though.
* {{Necromancer}}: The Others raise the dead to act as their army.
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: The wights.
* NoBodyLeftBehind: When Sam stabs an Other with a dragonglass dagger, the creature's skin and bones melt away into an icy puddle.
* OccultBlueEyes: The wights raised by the Others gain this even if it wasn’t their natural color in life.
* OutsideContextVillain: While everyone knows of their legend, in Westeros most people either believe they never existed or they all died out. The Night's Watch are the only group that really knows they exist, but even then they don't have a lot of details about the creatures.
* RaisingTheSteaks: The Others resurrect horses to serve as their mounts. They also resurrect other animals such as bears
* ShroudedInMyth: What they are and what they want is still a mystery. Most people they encounter they kill, but apparently they can be reasoned with on some level since Craster is able to keep them at bay by sacrificing his sons to them.
* UltimateEvil: The Great Other, as described by Melisandre, the god of darkness, cold and death.
* TheUnintelligible: The only time one of them was heard speaking, the noise was described like cracking ice.
* ZombieApocalypse: During the Long Night thousands of years ago they brought one of these about, and are now currently trying to do it again in Westeros.
[[/folder]]

!!Coldhands

[[folder: Coldhands]]
Coldhands is a mysterious figure from beyond the Wall. He looks like a wight and has hands black from pooled and congealed blood, but is intelligent and seemingly benign.
----
* {{Badass}}
* BigDamnHeroes: He saved Samwell & Gilly from Night's Watch deserters.
* HumanoidAbomination
* TheMarvelousDeer: He rides a great elk.
[[/folder]]

-->''"Valar Morghulis."''

[[folder:The Others]]

[[folder: Shagga, son of Dolf]]

[[folder: Timett, son of Timett]]

[[folder: Chella, daughter of Cheyk]]

Savage clans who live in the Vale, they hate the Arryns and rob any passing travellers.

* AxCrazy: The rest of Westeros see mountain clans as this, the mountain clans see the Burned Men as this, and even the ''Burned Men'' are a little wary around Timmett.
* {{Badass}}: All of the mountain clans are fierce fighters, and make travel into and out of the Vale a risky proposition for small groups or those with no weapons.

* RunningGag: "I'll chop off your manhood and feed it to the goats" is Shagga's favorite threats; it is sometimes used by [[DeadpanSnarker Tyrion]] to great effect. [[spoiler:It turns out that Shagga refers to a man's beard as his "manhood"]].
* ThirdPersonPerson

* TheSmurfettePrincipal: She is the only female leader of the Mountain Clans who is part of Tyrion's army.

* TheSmurffetePrincipal: She is the only female leader of the Mountain Clans who is part of Tyrion's army.

* AChildShallLeadThem: Timett, son of Timett, of the Burned Men is described as a gaunt youth, and is not yet twenty years old when he first appears. He leads the Burned Men because he is the most BadAss one there. When a Burned Man comes of age, he must burn a body part - usually a finger, toe or other expendable body part. Timmet chose to put out his own eye, doing so with a red hot knife. The Burned Men were so impressed they promoted him to "Red Hand" (a war leader) on the spot.
* ActionGirl/ DarkActionGirl/ ActionMom: Chella, daughter of Cheyk. She has forty-eight ears on the necklace around her neck. According to her, her sons have [[BadassFamily also taken many]].
* AnAxeToGrind: Shagga, son of Dolf.

* BadAss: Especially Shagga and Timmett.
* BerserkerTears: Shagga, when his friend Conn is killed.

* BoisterousBruiser: Shagga. He never stops.
* TheBrute: The entire clan becomes this to Tyrion, and they are widely hated by the people of King's Landing. Shagga is the most obvious example.
* DualWielding: Shagga, and sometimes Timmett.
* EyeScream: Timmett. He burned out his own eye just to prove how BadAss he is.

* RunningGag: "I'll chop off your manhood and feed it to the goats" is Shagga's favourite threat ; sometimes used by [[DeadpanSnarker Tyrion]] to great effect. [[spoiler:It turns out that Shagga refers to a man's beard as his "manhood"]]
* SkeletonsInTheCoatCloset: Chella's necklace of ears.
* ThirdPersonPerson: Shagga.

[[folder:The Guild of the Faceless Men]]

A religious society of assassins who worship the Many-Faced God, a god of death. Their headquarters is the House of Black and White in the Free City of Braavos. Their history stretches back to before the Doom of Valyria, originating in the volcanic mines of that ancient city. They now act as the top assassin guild in the known world, whose services are very hard to come by.

* AffablyEvil: They seem a pretty decent bunch considering what they are.
* AmbiguouslyEvil: At least until their true agenda (if any) is exposed, it's hard to classify them as good or evil.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Their worship of death is expressed in an unusual moral system which will readily provide this "gift" to anyone who desires it for themselves, but is very expensive when it comes to providing it to others (although it's implied that the price paid doesn't have to be financial). For instance, while the original Faceless Men lead Valyrian slaves to freedom, the initial action of the first Faceless Man was to MercyKill a slave rather than killing an abusive master.
** The second action was to help another slave kill his master, because it was the one thing he desired more than anything else, but afterwards the first Faceless Man told him that he must now serve, and that slave became the second Faceless Man.
* DarkIsNotEvil: Arguably an example of this (their white-and-black outfits indicate a tendency to think of themselves as both dark and light), as a shadowy group of death-worshipping assassins who provide euthanasia to those who wish for death. They also commit assassinations, but they only kill those who have driven others to pray (or pay) for their deaths, prefer not to kill someone they personally know, and are very strict about avoiding collateral damage.
* FaceStealer: Their means of a more potent disguise: [[spoiler: they take the faces off corpses of those who drank from the poisonous waters and use some sort of magic to take their appearances]]
* {{Glamour}}: One means of disguise.
* IndividualityIsIllegal: You can't become one of them unless you totally forsake your identity.
* MasterOfDisguise / VoluntaryShapeshifting: Their powers.
* MentorArchetype: Jaqen and the Kindly Man are both this to Arya. The latter's persona could be viewed as a conscious invocation of this trope.
* MercyKill: Will gladly provide this to anyone who desires it. Their temple has a poisonous spring that the suffering can drink from to receive painless euthanasia.
* MurderInc: They are a religious order of assassins whose two main functions are the providing of painless euthanasia and assassinations for hire which they consider a sacred rite.
* NoNameGiven: None of them have names other than Jaqen H'ghar (which is a fake persona anyway) and Arya identifies them by physical descriptors.
* ReligionOfEvil: Maybe.
* WeirdTradeUnion: An assassins' guild ''religion''.

[[folder: Jaqen H'ghar]]
!!Jaqen H'ghar
-->''"Valar Morghulis."''

A Faceless Man introduced as a prisoner being taken as "recruit" to the Wall, he ends up owing a debt to Arya during ''A Clash Of Kings'' and serves as an important mentor figure to Arya/impetus for her later decisions. He more than likely appears with a different face and identity in ''A Feast For Crows''.

* AffablyEvil: He's polite and charming and while a professional killer, displays no signs of sadism.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Because of his identity as a Faceless Man, he believes that saving lives necessitates BalancingDeathsBooks, and can't really be classified as good or evil.
* DeadPersonImpersonation: In ''A Feast For Crows'', he's heavily implied to be a character calling himself the Alchemist [[spoiler: and in this identity, ends up killing and taking the identity of Citadel student, Pate]].
* TheDreaded: His ex-cellmates Rorge & Biter certainly thought so.
* EvilMentor: Or, Morally Ambiguous Mentor.
* {{Foil}}: Regardless of whether the [[EpilepticTrees popular fan theory]] is true that he is also Arya's fencing teacher Syrio, he's definitely presented as a foil to him. Both men are from Braavos and serve as mentors to Arya, but Jaqen is a much more morally ambiguous figure, and his helpfulness to her is very conditional.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Played with. He ''can'', but [[spoiler: when Arya names ''him'' as the third person he must kill (see ThreeWishes below), he asks her to 'unsay' it.]]
* HitmanWithAHeart: Has some shades of this, as he seems to have some genuine affection for Arya
* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Generally kills in this manner, which appears to be a Faceless Man trademark.
* MasterOfDisguise / VoluntaryShapeshifting: Comes with the Faceless Man package.
* [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Only Known by His Undercover Name]]: Jaqen H'ghar is almost definitely not the man's real name.
* PunctuationShaker: Possibly the oddest and most "fantasy" name in the series.
* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker / ThirdPersonPerson: Always refers to himself in a detached way as "A Man" rather than saying "I". Likewise, he speaks of Arya in third person as "A girl" rather than saying "You".
* ThreeWishes: After Arya saves him, Rorge, and Biter, he offers her the lives of any three people in exchange as a kind of BalancingDeathsBooks.
* VillainyDiscretionShot: FridgeLogic would suggest that he must have done something pretty horrible to end up in the Black Cells/inspire the respect and fear of monsters like Rorge and Biter.

[[folder: The Kindly Man]]
!!The Kindly Man
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_kindly_man_ffg_2518.png]]

A priest in charge of the House of Black and White in Braavos. He guides Arya Stark along the path to becoming a Faceless Man.

* AffablyEvil: As his sobriquet suggests, he's a quite pleasant guy, and behaves in a friendly, grandfatherly manner to Arya, and [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative treats her better than anyone has in a long while]]. He's also clearly brainwashing her into a merciless, [[LossOfIdentity identity-less assassin]].
* ConsummateLiar/ SelfProclaimedLiar: He tells Arya that the basis for disguise is learning to exercise total control over ones emotions, and that he can consciously choose to display any (seemingly sincere) emotion he wants.
* CoolOldGuy
* MentorArchetype: To Arya.
** EvilMentor
* NightmareFace: When initially trying to recruit Arya, he turns his face into a rotting skull with worms and maggots crawling around on it. Arya is completely unaffected, and actually tries to eat one of the worms on his face. The Kindly Man is extremely amused by this.
-->"No one has ever tried to eat my worm before."
* OnlyKnownByHisNickname
* {{Troll}}: When Arya first asks him if he can teach her to change her face, he tells her to puff her cheeks and stick out her tongue, and when she does, tells her, "There, your face has changed." She is not amused.

[[folder: The Waif]]
!!The Waif

A member of the Faceless Men who also teaches Arya how to become a Faceless Man.

* ConsummateLiar: Like other Faceless Men, this is an ability she has developed through training, and plays a "game" with Arya to teach her this, wherein she tells her backstory and challenges Arya to spot the lies.
* CreepyChild: Comes across as one.
* MasterPoisoner: She specializes in crafting poisons to kill her targets.
* MysteriousWaif: ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
* OlderThanTheyLook: The waif is a Faceless Man (Faceless Woman?) who is thirty-six years old but looks like a child close to Arya's age. Her body is unnaturally small because she is around dangerous poisons all the time and the face she has probably isn't her real one anyway.

[[folder:The Others]]
-->''"In that darkness the white walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead Horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders big as hounds..."''

A monstrous race from the Lands of Always Winter. Eight thousand years ago they caused the Long Night, a period of time where the dead rose and attacked the living, laying waste to the world. According to legend they were driven back by Azor Ahai and locked away behind the Wall, where the Night's Watch was established to safeguard the world from their return. Though most believe the Others are simply a myth, the monsters have returned and are once again trying to plunge the world into a never-ending Winter.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Or at the very least, always hostile, implacable, and dangerous to mortals. [[WordOfGod Martin]] has hinted that there may be more to them than meets the eye, they can be reasoned with as shown with Craster's sons and the Children of the Forest don't fear them.
* BeautyIsBad: According to WordOfGod at least, as part of their [[TheFairFolk Sidhe]] motiff.
* BiggerBad: They serve as antagonists to the series as a whole even if most characters are unaware of their existence. The Great Other that Melisandre fears may possibly serve as one as well.
* CreepyBlueEyes
* TheDreaded: The members of the Night’s Watch are terrified of them for good reason, but the rest of Westeros only thinks of them as a myth.
* EvilIsDeathlyCold: Their bodies radiate cold, and it has been suggested that maybe they don’t just show up during winter storms, maybe they ''cause'' them. Even their weapons and armor are made of ice.
* TheFairFolk: Of the terrifyingly dangerous sort. Notably because, in their role as mankind's enemies, they resemble more the medieval version, which, as you may guess, equates them with [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demons]].
* GiantSpider: Old Nan and some of the books Samwell reads say that they had "giant ice spiders" at their disposal during the Long Night but it has yet to be confirmed if they ever existed or if the Others still have them.
* {{Hero Killer}}s
* TheHorde
* HumanoidAbomination: They look human but they have milk white skin and OccultBlueEyes.
-->'''GeorgeRRMartin''': "They are strange, beautiful… think, oh… [[TheFairFolk the Sidhe]] made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous."
* HumanSacrifice: Craster gave them his sons. This is currently the only way known to stop them from attacking you on sight. [[spoiler:Craster's wives describe the Others coming for Gilly’s son as the baby's "brothers."]]
* ImplacableMan: Stab an Other all you want, they’ll just keep getting up again and again. Wights will also keep coming unless set alight, though they at least retain damage done to them, even if the body parts cut off of them still move.
* KillItWithFire: The only way to kill a wight outside of waiting for it to decompose.
* KryptoniteFactor: [[spoiler:Dragonglass, or obsidian, is the only thing currently known to kill an Other]]. This doesn’t work on wights though.
* {{Necromancer}}: The Others raise the dead to act as their army.
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: The wights.
* NoBodyLeftBehind: When Sam stabs an Other with a dragonglass dagger, the creature's skin and bones melt away into an icy puddle.
* OccultBlueEyes: The wights raised by the Others gain this even if it wasn’t their natural color in life.
* OutsideContextVillain: While everyone knows of their legend, in Westeros most people either believe they never existed or they all died out. The Night's Watch are the only group that really knows they exist, but even then they don't have a lot of details about the creatures.
* RaisingTheSteaks: The Others resurrect horses to serve as their mounts. They also resurrect other animals such as bears
* ShroudedInMyth: What they are and what they want is still a mystery. Most people they encounter they kill, but apparently they can be reasoned with on some level since Craster is able to keep them at bay by sacrificing his sons to them.
* UltimateEvil: The Great Other, as described by Melisandre, the god of darkness, cold and death.
* TheUnintelligible: The only time one of them was heard speaking, the noise was described like cracking ice.
* ZombieApocalypse: During the Long Night thousands of years ago they brought one of these about, and are now currently trying to do it again in Westeros.

* ConsumateLiar/ SelfConfessedLiar: He tells Arya that the basis for disguise is learning to exercise total control over ones emotions, and that he can consciously choose to display any (seemingly sincere) emotion he wants.

* ConsumateLiar: Like other Faceless Men, this is an ability she has developed through training, and plays a "game" with Arya to teach her this, wherein she tells her backstory and challenges Arya to spot the lies.

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