Karsi

When Jon Snow and Tormund reached Hardhome to offer the Free Folk passage south of the Wall, the clan chiefs were called together. Karsi came speaking for her own people. Jon spoke of the enemy they all shared and offered a stockpile of dragonglass to fight it.

The Thenn magnar Loboda scoffed, likening the offer to tales of ice spiders as big as hounds. Karsi asked him how, after everything they had seen, he could still call anything unbelievable. She said she'd back the plan if Tormund vouched for it, but Loboda wouldn't budge: he warned that anyone who boarded a crow's ship would be put to death, and that his ancestors would spit on him for breaking bread with one. Karsi answered that hers would too, except they were all dead already, so it hardly mattered. Loboda got up and walked out, and many of the other chiefs followed him. Karsi was left muttering that she hated the Thenns.

Karsi came around to Jon's plan and set about getting her people onto the boats. She put her daughters on one of them and told the youngest that her older sister was in charge until she came back. When the girl protested, Karsi explained she still had to help the elders aboard, and promised she'd be right behind them.

The army of the dead fell on Hardhome while the rest of the Free Folk ran for the ships. Karsi stayed to hold the wights back, cutting down several while she bought time. When Jon pressed her to board with the others, she told him he was the one who needed to leave first: without the Lord Commander there, the Watch wouldn't let her daughters or the rest of the wildlings through the Wall.

The fighting brought her face to face with wight children, and she froze, unable to bring herself to kill them. The dead overwhelmed her and she joined their ranks.

A year later, her memory surfaced for a moment among the visions Bran Stark witnessed, a fleeting trace of Hardhome's fall.