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  ===Backstory===
  In the novels and the 2014 companion book ''The World of Ice & Fire'', Martin establishes that, millennia before the events of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series, a pact existed between the Children of the Forest (elf-like creatures) and the First Men (mankind). This was weakened by the emergence of the Others, an enigmatic and malevolent nonhuman species who inflicted a night that lasted a generation and a winter that lasted decades. After the Others were pushed back, the Children and the First Men raised The Wall, a vast barrier of stone, ice and magic from one coast of northern Westeros to the other, to bar the passage of the Others south.