5.2.3.2. The Whents of Harrenhal
- House Wode, knights sworn to Harrenhal who hold two earth-and-timber keeps just north of the stream that separates the riverland from the lands owing fealty to King's Landing (I: 276. IV: 400)
- Harrenhal was a seat of kings (I: 643)
- Harren the Black and his line died in the burning of Harrenhal by Aegon the Conqueror (I: 684)
- Harren had desired the highest hall and the most colossal towers in the Seven Kingdoms. The construction of his dream took forty years. Thousands of captives from the other realms died in the quarries chained to sledges or laboring on the five huge towers. Weirwoods were cut down to provide rafters and beams (II: 88)
- Every house that has held Harrenhal since Harren the Black died has met misfortune and it is believed to be cursed (II: 88)
- On the north edge of the God's Eye is Harrentown (II: 157)
- Ghosts are said to dwell in Harrenhal (II: 157)
- Harrenhal is one of the richest castles in the Seven Kingdoms. Its lands are broad and rich and fertile (II: 202)
- Harrenhal is near the fords of the Trident which provide access to the lands south of it (II: 235)
- Stories have it that Harren the Black mixed the blood of children into the mortar of Harrenhal (II: 307)
- Just west of Harrenhal is a town, probably Harrentown (II: 308)
- Harrenhal is built on a gigantic scale, its colossal curtain walls sheer and high as mountain cliffs while atop the battlements the wood-and-iron scorpions seem as small as their namesakes when seen from the ground (II: 308)
- Harrenhal's gatehouse is as large as Winterfell's Great Keep, and its stone is discoloured and fissured (II: 308)
- From outside the gatehouse, only the tops of five immense towers can be seen because of the height of the walls obscure the view of them (II: 308)
- The shortest of Harrenhal's towers is half again as high as the tallest one in Winterfell, yet none of the towers are proper; they're bent and lumped and cracked from the melting of the stone by the Targaryen dragons centuries earlier (II: 308)
- Harrenhal's bathhouse is large and made of stone and timber. It's on the edge of the Flowstone Yard (II: 308, 655)
- The occupied towers of Harrenhal are so large that they each have an understeward (II: 309)
- No one remembers the names that Harren the Black gave to his towers, but now they are called the Tower of Dread, the Widow's Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower (II: 334)
- There are cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower (II: 334)
- Harrenhal's kitchens are inside of a round stone building with a domed roof (II: 334)
- Servants would eat at the trestle table in the undercrofts of the towers (II: 334)
- There's a forge in Harrenhal (II: 334)
- Much of Harrenhal is far gone in decay. The Whents used only the lower thirds of two of the five towers, letting the rest go to ruin (II: 334)
- Men-at-arms eat in the Barracks Hall above the armory (II: 335)
- The ground floor of the Wailing Tower is given over to storerooms and granaries. The two floors above would be used to house a garrison (II: 335)
- The upper stories of the Wailing Tower have not been occupied for eighty years (II: 335)
- The topmost stories of the towers are infested with nests of huge black bats (II: 335)
- There are claims that Harren the Black and his sons haunt the cellars of the Wailing Tower, even though they died in the Kingspyre Tower (II: 335)
- The Wailing Tower is named so because it wails when the wind blows from the north and the air runs through the cracks made by the heat of the burning (II: 335)
- The Kingspyre Tower is still the tallest of the towers, but it's lopsided under the weight of the slagged stone that make it look like a candle (II: 335)
- Harrenhal covers three times as much ground as Winterfell and its buildings are so much larger that they can scarcely be compared. Its stables house a thousand horses, its godswood covers 20 acres, its kitchens are as large as Winterfell's Great Hall (II: 336)
- Harrenhal's great hall is named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths but it has only thirty-three or thirty-five hearths. They are huge, however, with about ten feet separating each (II: 336. III: 421)
- An entire army of thousands could be feasted in the hall (II: 336)
- Walls, doors, halls, and steps are all built to a giant scale (II: 336)
- The Flowstone Yard with its lumpy surface is where men-at-arms and knights might exercise and where squires clean arms and armor (II: 338, 400)
- There is a covered gallery above the Flowstone Yard with arches looking towards it (II: 339)
- The east gates are portcullised (II: 339)
- Harrenhal has a brewhouse (II: 403)
- A stone bridge arches between the Widow's Tower and Kingspyre (II: 403)
- There is a great cell under the Widow's Tower that's used to keep prisoners (II: 495)
- When empty, Harrenhal seems strange. Sometimes the stones seem to soak up sound, while at other times echoes are amplified many times over (II: 496)
- Crossing the middle bailey, one can go around the Tower of Dread to reach the mews where falcons were once raised (and are now said to exist there only as ghosts) (II: 496)
- The castellan's chambers in Kingspyre are as spacious as that of a lord's (II: 496)
- There are cellars beneath Kingspyre (II: 496)
- Harrenhal's forge is in the armory (II: 496)
- The Lothstons ruled Harrenhal before the Whents, and within living memory. The last of them was killed several generation's ago. They had a black reputation (II: 497. IV: 60)
- Harrenhal's godswood has a small stream running through it (II: 498)
- Harrenhal has a weirwood heart tree, its face carved into a terrible visage full of hatred with a twisted mouth and flaring eyes (II: 499)
- An arched span of bridge divides the outer and the middle wards (II: 501)
- The Barracks Hall and the armory are across the ward from where the godswood is (II: 501)
- Just inside the door into the Widow's Tower is a winding stair leading down to the dungeons. The steps reach a dank stone vault which is long, gloomy, and windowless. Scones on the walls hold torches (II: 503)
- The vault is separated from the cell by heavy iron bars (II: 503)
- Harrenhal's middle ward has a bear pit (II: 507)
- There is a well in the Flowstone Yard (II: 648)
- There is a privy shaft in the lord's chambers (II: 655)
- The great solar for the lord of Harrenhal is down half a flight of stairs from the bedchamber. It is a spare, draughty room which is as large as the halls of many smaller castles (II: 654)
- There is a huge oaken table in the lord's solar (II: 654)
- To get to the godswood from Kingspyre, a person must pass the Wailing Tower (II: 657)
- Kingspyre's cellar has narrow windows (II: 658)
- There's a loft in the forge where apprentices sleep (II: 658)
- There's a postern in the east wall behind the Tower of Ghosts (II: 658)
- The godswood is walled (II: 659)
- The Tower of Ghosts is the most ruinous of the Harrenhal's towers. It stands behind the remains of a sept that collapsed when the Targaryens burned the castle with their dragons (II: 660)
- Weeds grow between the broke stones about the Tower of Ghosts (II: 660)
- The postern near the Tower of Ghosts is one of the least of Harrenhal's gates, being a narrow door of strong oak studded with iron nails set in an angle of the wall beneath a defensive tower (II: 660)
- There are woods and streams not far north of Harrenhal (III: 35)
- The land north of Harrenhal grows progressively hillier (III: 39)
- There are several rivers between Harrenhal and the Trident: the Darry, the Greenapple, the Maiden, the Little Willow, and perhaps others (III: 39)
- The Little Willow flows into the Big Willow, which in turn flows into the Trident (III: 40)
- Many great lords came from all over Westeros to witness or take part in Lord Whent's tourney. Mace Tyrell was among them, and so were northerners from the barrowlands, Hornwoods, Mormonts, and Manderlys (III: 280, 281)
- Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard was Lord Whent's brother. He and his four nephews swore to defend Lord Whent's daughter as queen of love and beauty (III: 280. SSM: 1)
- The walls of Harrenhal are so thick that passing beneath them feels like passing through a stone tunnel (III: 347)
- There are broad stone steps leading from the outer ward to the entrance of one of the collosal round towers (III: 347)
- Harrenhal's bathhouse is a low-ceilinged room filled with great stone tubs large enough to hold six or seven after the fashion of the Free Cities (III: 416)
- The Hall of a Hundred Hearths is huge, larger even than the throne room of the Red Keep. There are steps to two galleries above (III: 421)
- The floor of the great hall is of smooth slate (III: 421)
- It had been long years since King Aerys had last left the Red Keep when he went to Harrenhal for Lord Whent's tourney (III: 485)
- Harrenhal's eastern gate is smaller than its main gate (III: 501)
- Six miles east of Harrenhal stands the lake road which runs southwards (III: 501)
- Harren the Black had wished to do even his bear-baiting in lavish style, so the bear pit at Harrenhal is ten yards across and five yards deep, walled in stone, floored with sand, and encircled by six tiers of marble benches (III: 510)
- The boundary between the lands sworn to King's Landing and those sworn to Riverrun, marked by a stream, is a mere day's ride north of Sow's Horn, which in turn is perhaps a week's ride north of King's Landing (IV: 400)
- Through the main gates, the walls are so thick that no less than a dozen murder holes are passed before one reaches the yard on the other side (IV: 401)
- Hunter's Hall (IV: 405)
- Lady Shella Whent was wife to Lord Whent, who hosted the great tourney at Harrenhal. The fair maid was her daughter (SSM: 1)
- Harrenhal is immensely strong, and a garrison of three hundred men should be able to hold it against a siege for half a year or more (SSM: 1)
- Harrenhal is so large that a larger-than-normal garrison is needed to hold it against a determined siege (SSM: 1
Last revised August 01, 2009
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