Game of Thrones: Everything We Know About White Walkers 

Game of Thrones: Everything We Know About White Walkers

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Winter is coming....and it\'s bringing terror with it.

There\'s a damn good reason why your Night\'s Watch brothers will almost immediately put the torch to your fast-decaying body should you ever expire beyond the Wall. Yes, if you\'re unfortunate enough to die way up in the frozen super-North, you\'ll come back as a mindless, glowing-eyed zombie bent on eviscerating all humanity on behest of the all-powerful White Walkers. And stabbing you in the brain won\'t help. It\'s got to be fire. As a "Wight," the only way to stop you is to turn you into to ash-upon-snow.

So who/what are Game of Thrones\' White Walkers? Last appearing in the Season 4 episode "Oathkeeper," these ancient icy evil devils are just a bunch of make-believe hooey according to the majority of sun-soaked Westeros. But we know better. And so they wait, poised and ready to devour all they see once...well, once Winter comes. Yes, that pesky season that never seems to arrive. Once it hits though, look out. It\'s going to be like Burning Man. Except the opposite.

Game of Thrones\' fifth season kicks off on April 12th and since the looming threat of the White Walkers will be a big part of the upcoming episodes, we thought we\'d do a rundown regarding everything we know about the bastards.

First off, no one truly knows where they came from. Only that they came. They happen to pre-date "actual knowledge about things." Most say they first popped up during the "Long Night" - a blistering, cruel winter season that blanketed the entire realm for a whole generation about 8000 years back. From that fresh snowy hell came White Walkers. Cold sore kissing cousins of the First Men and the Children of the Forest. So either the Long Night somehow created them with its sheer, sharp coldness or it allowed things to be Goldilocks enough for them to finally emerge.

What Are They Doing? Like, Right Now?

So why haven\'t they come back? Well, after Azor Ahai and his flaming sword helped drive the Walkers back in the War of the Dawn, Brandon Stark - Brandon "the Builder" that is - constructed that big damn wall to keep them at bay. And the celibate, black-clad Night\'s Watch was formed to guard it whilst brooding.

Want to feel old? This is the baby from Nirvana\'s "Nevermind" album cover.

, right beyond Castle Black, just a hop, skip and a jump away from civilization. It was the first scene we saw on the series. So the questions remain. Is it the Great Wall that\'s keeping them out of the North (some say there are spells on it) or is it the whole lack-of-proper-Winter? Or are they just the type who think that being on-time to a party is "uncool?"

White Walkers are nothing more than silly myths and fool superstition to everyone except the Night\'s Watch and the Wildings. And even then, it\'s hard to find those who\'ve seen them and lived to report back to HQ. Fortunately for those unlucky enough to consider them next-door neighbors, White Walker appearances are still sporadic up there - they only spawn occasionally. But a full-blown "world event" is coming. And all the Southern haughty folk who\'ve called them "grumkins" (they hate that) and "snarks" (they hate that too, though not as much) better hope they saved some of grandma\'s old jagged shards of Dragonglass. Or else their a** is grass.

Speaking of Dragonglass, it\'s the only way you\'re going to make any headway with the Walkers. They\'re impervious to all forms of attacks except fat, inept Night\'s Watch stewards accidentally stabbing them with a piece of obsidian they didn\'t even know they were holding. So it\'s best to stock up on this rare, hard-to-find, you\'ll-never-get-any-ever material. Because it\'s the only thing that will end the nightmare.

So after you\'ve soiled yourself because you spotted a giant horde of creeping, rotting zombie-sickles headed your way, determined to cut you up into little pieces for their overrated spiral art, you have to wonder...what is it you\'re actually looking at? Why, it\'s the Wights. The resurrected corpses of men and animals that the Walkers now use as their obedient legion of head loppers.

You don\'t have to die by a Walker\'s hands to become a Wight, you just have to be some poor soul who lost his life up in the "true North." This is the s***ty numbers game that the Walkers play. They have the entire world of the dead at their disposal. Like Justin Bieber.

Even Walkers know the value of a good "creepy little girl" scare.

While most Walkers look like Skynyrd roadies, there was one we met last season who was sort of like "Darth Maul Meets Daiquiri Ice."  Not only did the spikes on his head give him a "Royal" presence, but there\'s a strong chance he\'s [for those who\'ve read the books] the Night\'s King.

in the books, only in Old Nan stories and such, so this is all just speculation. All we know is that he has the power to turn gurgling baby boys into crackling Walker juniors. In case you were wondering how Walkers themselves multiplied. They do it by sub-zero snuggling. All they need are freshly swiped tykes. And yes, we still insist that Walkers are probably the best parents in the entire realm. Better than Craster, for sure. Better than the Starks too. Or, at least, they hold a better survival rate for their offspring.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.

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