The horses tend to be small, rough-coated garrons (I: 2)
The men of Night's Watch wear only black (I: 2, 44, etc.)
The Night's Watch has fewer than 1,000 men (I: 20)
Night's Watch is a Sworn Brotherhood (I: 56)
The Night's Watch is largely made up of the misfits of the kingdoms: peasants, debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards. Only a few of the noble and knightly houses have members at Night's Watch (I: 104)
Most recruits are seventeen or older (I: 149)
Recruits of the Watch wear roughspun black (I: 149)
The Lord Commander leads the Night's Watch, with the chief Maester, First Ranger, and others as high officers under him (I: 150)
On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns (I: 150)
The men of Night's Watch puts aside their families when they swear their vows, making the others members his brothers (I: 150)
Foods from the sea, such as crabs, come from Eastwatch in barrels packed with snow (I: 171)
The Night's Watch received some knights after the War of the Usurper, as Tywin Lannister gave those who fought for the Targaryens at King's Landing the choice of losing their heads or taking the black (I: 172)
The Watch has some six hundred men at Castle Black, two hundred at the Shadow Tower, and even fewer at Eastwatch. A bare third of them are fighting men (I: 174)
Once the Watch spent the summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher. Now it is all the Watch can do to stay alive (I: 174)
The Night's Watch believes a Long Night will fall as it did 8,000 years before, and only it will stand between the Seven Kingdoms and a darkness out of the north (I: 175, 547)
A man on sentry duty atop the wall has a full mile assigned to them (I: 177)
When recruits are pronounced ready to take the vows, a special dinner is made for them (I: 372)
Every man in the Watch walks the wall, and all are expected to bare steel in its defense, but the rangers are the true fighting men of the Watch (I: 372)
The order of the builders provide masons and carpenters, miners, and woodsmen (I: 372, 373)
The order of the stewards keep the Watch alive. They hunt and farm, tend horses, milk cows, gather firewood, cook meals, make clothing, and bring supplies from the south (among other like things) (I: 376)
The Night's Watch are called the black knights of the Wall in songs (I: 396)
The vows of new members of the Night's Watch are given at sunset as the night gathers. (I: 431)
All crimes and debts are forgiven and forgotten, all ties of loyalty and grudges are washed away, and old loves and old wrongs are put away when a man becomes a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch. He begins life anew (I: 431)
The Lord Commander has a personal steward who serves his needs. By custom he also serves as his squire (I: 433, 434, 655)
The vow of Night's Watch (I: 435, 436)
When men return from ranging beyond the Wall, watchmen on top of the Wall sound a great horn to hail their return if they are seen. (I: 467)
When Aegon slew Black Harren, Harren's brother was Lord Commander of the Watch and had 10,000 swords at his command; but he did not march (I: 553)
When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men, the sons of the fallen kings held to their vows (I: 553)
A stranger wearing black is viewed with cold suspicion in every village and holdfast north of the Neck, on the assumption that he is a member of Night's Watch who has forsaken his vows (I: 646, 647)
The men of the Wall call the whores of Mole Town "buried treasures" and sometimes brothers of the Watch sneak off to go "mining." That too is oathbreaking, but no one seems to care (I: 648)
The vow of Night's Watch: Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all nights to come (I: 651. II: 691)
Any one of the lords bannermen to the Starks commands more swords than can be found on the Wall (I: 653)
Men of the Watch going south to gather more recruits also gather supplies such as hides and cloth, pig iron, ravens, books and paper and ink, oil, chests of medicines and spices, and bales of sourleaf (II: 23)
Pepper is not among the products that gets to the Wall (II: 62)
Important books and records used to be copied regularly, with some of the oldest probably having been copied more than half a hundred times (II: 70)
A book kept in Castle Black on the Wall, written by a ranger named Redwyn in the time of King Dorren Stark, which tells of fighting giants and trading with the Children of the Forest (II: 70)
Among the brotherhood of Night's Watch, there is an unspoken pact that men do not discuss too deeply the going-ons in the realm when they have anything to do with kin and old loyalties (II: 74)
There was a time when a sworn brother of the Watch was feasted from Dorne to Winterfell and high lords called it an honor to shelter him under his own roof (II: 103)
The "ranger roads" are game trails and stream beds which the brothers of the Watch who are ranging north use to lead them deeper into the north beyond the Wall (II: 153)
Some wildlings have actually aided the rangers in the past (II: 260, 261)
Rangers have been known to lay with wildling women in the past (II: 261)
The Night's Watch is not adverse to accepting orphans and boys from the wildlings to raise to the black, and has done so in the past (II: 274-275, 558)
All the wildlings hosts that have attacked southwards have broken their strength on the Wall or by the power of Winterfell beyond (II: 276)
A single horn blast is used to herald arriving brothers of the Watch. Two horn blasts seem to warn of attack (II: 457)
"Rayder" appears to be the last name given at the Wall for men who were wildling-born but raised to the black (II: 558)
The wildlings do not spare brothers of the Night's Watch, unless they break their oaths and prove it by cutting their black cloaks, swearing on a father's grave, cursing the Watch and the Lord Commander, and other like things (II: 692)
A thousand years ago, a Lord Commander said that the Watch are dressed in black because they aren't expected to survive their duties (III: 11)
Three horn blasts have not been sounded in thousands of years (III: 14)
Three horn blasts warn of the Others approaching (III: 14)
The Lord Commander some 10 or 12 years ago was a Qorgyle (III: 82)
There is more commerce between the black brothers and the free folk that many realize or admit (III: 83)
Rangers often share skins for warmth (III: 169)
Two short horn blasts followed by a long one is a call to mount up (III: 204)
A black brother spoke at the great tournament at Harrenhal, asking for knights to join the Night's Watch (III: 281)
Each patrol on the Wall is made up of four men, two rangers and two builders. The builders note cracks, melting, and other structual problems, while the rangers look for signs of foes. The patrols ride mules because of their surefootedness, specially trained for the duty (III: 298)
One patrol in four follow the base of the Wall to search for cracks in the foundation of the ice or signs of tunneling (III: 298)
Lord Commander Qorgyle used to send patrols out every third day from Castle Black to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and every second day from Castle Black to the Shadow Tower, but the Watch had more men in his day (III: 298)
Lord Commander Mormont varys the number of patrols and the days of their departure, to make it more difficult for the wildlings to know their comings and goings. Sometimes a larger force will be sent to one of the abandoned castles for a fortnight or a moon's turn as well, which was suggested by the First Ranger, Benjen Stark (III: 298, 299)
The Watch, with the King in the North and the Umbers, trapped the brother kings Gendel and Gorne some 3,000 years ago. Gorne was slain, and the Watch and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms believe that Gendel was slain as well, although the wildlings claim differently (III: 300)
The Night's Watch must once have known about the effectiveness of dragonglass against the Others, but it has forgotten much in the hundreds and thousands of years since it was founded (III: 373)
At the funeral for a black brother, his fellows finish their eulogies with the words, "And now his watch is ended" (III: 375)
The New Gift belongs to the Night's Watch, as does Brandon's Gift which lies north of it. It's said that Brandon the Builder gave all the land south of the Wall to the black brothers, to a distance of twenty-five leagues, for their sustenance and support, but some maesters say that it was some other Brandon, not the Builder (III: 452, 453. SSM: 1)
Thousands of years after the creation of Brandon's gift, Good Queen Alysanne visited the Wall on her dragon Silverwing some two hundred years ago, and she thought the Night's Watch was so brave that she had the Old King (who followed after her on his own dragon) double the size of their lands to fifty leagues, making the New Gift (III: 453. IV: 73)
Wildling raids have increased over the last years as the Watch has grown weaker, and so the places nearest the Wall have been raided so often that people have moved further south into the mountains or into the Umber lands east of the Kingsroad (III: 453)
Brandon's Gift had been farmed for years by the Watch, but as it dwindled there were fewer hands to plow the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards, so the wild had reclaimed many a field and hall (III: 461. SSM: 1)
The New Gift had villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers, but many of those stand abandoned as well (III: 461. V: 53. SSM: 1)
The black brothers make hard enemies but good customers for ships with the right cargo (III: 608)
Lord Commander Runcel Hightower tried to bequeathe the Watch to his bastard son (III: 612)
Lord Commander Rodrik Flint thought to make himself King-beyond-the-Wall (III: 612)
Tristan Mudd, Mad Marq Rankenfell, and the bastard Robin Hill were Lord Commanders who nearly destroyed the Watch when they forgot their vows in favor of their pride and ambition (III: 612. SSM: 1)
600 years ago, the commanders at Snowgate and the Nightfort went to war against each other. When their Lord Commander sought to intervene, they joined forces to murder him. The Stark in Winterfell had to take a hand, and their heads (III: 612)
The reason the strongholds of the Watch have been made without fortifications to the south is so that they are not defensible should any members of the Watch go rogue (III: 612)
Jeor Mormont is the 997th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch (III: 612)
The Nightfort figures in some of the scariest stories of the North, although doubtlessly many of them are false. It was there that Night's King reigned before his name was wiped from the memory of man, and where the Rat Cook served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the 79 sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered, where King Sherrit had called down his curse of the Andals of old, where the apprentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the Hellhounds fight, and where Mad Axe had walked the yards and climbed the towers to butcher his brothers in the dark (III: 624, 625)
The Nightfort was the first castle abandoned by the Watch, back in the time of the Old King. Even then it had been three-quarters empty and too costly to maintain. Good Queen Alysanne had suggested that the Watch replace it with a smaller, newer castle at a spot seven miles to the east, where the Wall curved along the shore of a beautiful green lake. Deep Lake was paid for by the queen's jewels and built by the men the Old King had sent north (III: 628)
Seventy-nine deserters once left the Nightfort to become outlaws. One of them was Lord Ryswell's youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands they sought shelter at his castle, but he took them captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them, sealing them alive in the ice with spears and horns so that they could face north; they had left their posts in life, so in death their watch went on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and stand beside the son he had loved (III: 628)
The Night's King had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watc (III: 629).
The legends say that the Night's King was a warrior without fear, and when he saw a woman atop the Wall with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars, he chased her and loved her though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well. He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years he ruled until finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was discovered that he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of him were destroyed and his very name was forbidden (III: 629, 630)
The Night's Watch selects its Lord Commander by vote. A candidate needs two-thirds of the votes of the Sworn Brothers to be given that station (III: 860)
Since most brothers are unlettered, tradition had it that voting was done with tokens dropped into big iron kettles. The barrels of tokens are hidden by a drape so that no one's vote could be seen. Men are allowed to vote for a friend or even whole garrisons who cannot make it to the choosing (III: 862)
Seashells, stones, copper pennies, arrowheads, nails, and acorns are among the tokens used in the choosing (III: 862)
There was once a choosing that lasted near two years and seven hundred votes (III: 862)
The Lord Commander of the Watch has been chosen by the vote of the Sworn Brothers he would lead ever since the Wall was raised thousands of years ago (III: 882)
The Gifts were given to the Night's Watch in perpetuity, meaning that they cannot be lawfully seized, attainted, or taken (III: 883)
Any Sworn Brother may offer up any other Sworn Brother's name for consideration in the choosing of the Lord Commander (III: 896)
The Annals of the Black Centaur, an exhaustive chronicle by Septon Jorquen of the nine years in which Ser Orbert Caswell was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch (IV: 72)
The Night's Watch has long emphasized sword training over the bow, a relic of days when one in every ten members of the Watch had been a knight. Now the figure is one in a hundred (IV: 74)
Four hundred years before the Conquest, Osric Stark was elected Lord Commander at the age of ten, and served for sixty years. He is one of four Lord Commanders known to have been elected younger than sixteen. All of them were sons, brothers, or bastards of the Kings of the North (IV: 79-80)
It is recorded that the children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch a hundred daggers of dragonglass each year during the Age of Heroes (IV: 80)
The Night's Watch keeps several galleys at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, both larger vessels capable of crossing the narrow sea and lean fighting vessels (IV: 217)
Maester Aemon joined the watch at the age of thirty-five. He was escorted by Ser Duncan the Tall, and arrived with pomp that the Watch had not seen since Nymeria sent them six kings in golden fetters. His brother, King Aegon V, emptied the dungeons to send an "honor guard" with him, and one of the released prisoners was none other than Brynden Rivers, known as Bloodraven (IV: 218-219)
Bloodraven was eventually chosen as lord commander of the Night's Watch (IV: 219)
It's said a dozen Lord Commanders came and went while Maester Aemon served on the Wall, beginning with his brother Aegon's reign (IV: 519)
A boy of a little less than a man's sixteen years is completely bound by taking the oaths of the Watch, his minority providing no loopholes. The Night's Watch would not administer the oath to a youth several years from his majority, however (SSM: 1)
Many transactions at Mole's Town are paid for by barter, but there is coin to be found on the Wall although not as much as in old days when the Gifts were more thoroughly worked and taxed (SSM: 1)
There have been a few cases of men of the Watch having their vows released, but they are very rare, requiring the proper authority (SSM: 1, 2)
Not all recruits to the Watch have gone dociley (SSM: 1)
The wildlings do not hate northmen as much as they hate the Night's Watch (SSM: 1)
Maesters serving on the Wall take the oaths of the Night's Watch (SSM: 1)
Because the taxes it collects are in kind, the Watch is rich in foods like turnips, but poor in coin (V: 53)