Craster's Keep was no true castle, only a fortified hall of mud and timber raised by a wildling who kept many wives and few friends, and who had long bought the goodwill of the Night's Watch with shelter and a warm fire. When the broken survivors of the disaster at the Fist of the First Men straggled back through the snows, cold, starving, and full of grief, it was to Craster's keep that Lord Commander Jeor Mormont led them. Their host had betrayed no expectation of hospitality equal to their need, and the surly welcome of a man who hoarded his meager stores while brothers went hungry stoked a smoldering rage among the ranks.
The quarrel began over food and ended in blood. When Craster taunted the starving men and named them beggars and thieves, one of the brothers cut his throat, and in the sudden fury that followed the Old Bear too was struck down, stabbed in the back by a man he had trusted, calling for order to the last. The maesters count it a grievous shame upon the Watch, for Jeor Mormont was a hard and honorable Lord Commander who had held the shadow of the Wall for many years, and to die by a sworn brother's hand at the hearth of a wildling was an end unworthy of him.
With their commander slain the brotherhood fractured utterly. The mutineers seized the keep and Craster's wives, giving themselves over to drink and violence, while the loyal men who could still stand fled south toward the Wall as best they might. The keep, once a waystation of the ranging, became a den of murderers and rapers who called no man lord, a festering wound in the lands beyond the Wall that would trouble the Watch again before the winter was through.