#craster's keep

[jackoshadows]

“A bastard,” Jon said with a laugh. “You can say it, Sam. I’ve heard the word before.” He put the spurs to his surefooted little garron. “I need to hunt down Ser Ottyn. Be careful around Craster’s women.” As if Samwell Tarly needed warning on that score. “We’ll talk later, after we’ve made camp.” - Jon, AGoT

[wpmorse]

The Lord Commander stood over Craster's corpse, dark with anger. "The gods will curse us," he cried. "There is no crime so foul as for a guest to bring murder into a man's hall. By all the laws of the hearth, we—"

Samwell II-PG 458

Night Watch members mutiny against their host. Furious, Lord Commander Jeor Mormont curses them in an act of defiance that will last for about fifteen seconds longer.

This was another paragraph that there was way too much going on. The fight scene would have been a mess. So I decided to give Mormont his last stand.

Just as well, since I realized in my last drawing of Craster in A Clash of Kings I had drawn him clean-shaven. Reading this chapter was the first time I realized he had a full beard.

[wpmorse]

Back of a vegetable garden and empty sheepfold, a dozen black brothers were loosing arrows at a butt they'd built of hay and straw. The slender blond steward they called Sweet Donnel had laid a shaft just off the bull's eye at fifty yards. "Best that, old man," he said. Samwell II - 445

Retreating from the Fight on the Fist, the remaining Night's Watch gathers at Craster's Keep. Some of them unwind by practicing their archery.

This one was fun. I think I may have taken some liberties with it since I didn't know just how clear-cut the area around Craster's was. (According to this picture, quite a bit.) And I didn't think about how much snow there was at Craster's considering Sam had been wading through the snow the last time we saw him. Here there doesn't seem to be more snow than when they last stopped here.

Still, it was nice to do some to present a brief respite before things go downhill hard in a couple of pages.

[squattingslag]

[gotcasting]

Craster

Anthony Hopkins - 79 years, Welsh.

[monohedron]

[summerslair]

If I lurk about after, not too close to the fire, belike they'll take no note of me till morn. The ones under his roof will be the first he murders, but at least we'll die dry.

Eddison Tollett to Jon Snow about sleeping in Craster’s Keep

[skysquids]

in all the discussions where people cite the abuse of woman as 'realism' within game of thrones, i never hear anyone talk about how one man routinely abuses twenty women for generations without any of them ever cutting his throat in his sleep.  like, the makers of the show seem to feel like no explanation of this situation is even necessary.  i find it difficult to imagine twenty men being routinely beaten, and having half of their children taken away to be killed for decades by only one dude without any one of them ever doing anything about it.  we would at least get some explanation.