The Tall Men, known as Tagaez Fen in their native language, were a people native to the grasslands of Essos. In Westeros they are known as the Sarnori, for at the height of their power the Kingdom of Sarnor ruled all the lands watered by the Sarne and the lakes that were once the Silver Sea, and fifty leagues beyond.[1]
Appearance
Tall Men were long of limb, brown of skin, like the Zoqora, and with eyes and hair as black as night.[1]
Customs
Sarnori riders wore steel and the silk of spiders. They rode coal-black mares, and the greatest of their warriors went to battle in scythed chariots pulled by teams of bloodred horses. These were often driven by their wives or daughters, for it was the custom among the Tall Men for men and women to make war together.[1]
History
The Tall Men traced their descent to Huzhor Amai, the mythic king descended from the last of the equally legendary Fisher Queens and who took as wives the daughters of the greatest lords and kings of the Cymmeri, Zoqora, and Gipps. In fact, it was the Tall Men who conquered these three races and eventually assimilated them.[1]
Proud and quarrelsome, the Tall Men seldom unified under a single ruler but nevertheless established a civilization that was one of the greatest in the known world for more than two thousand years. They warred against the Qaathi and allied with the Valyrian Freehold during the Second and Third Ghiscari Wars. During the Fourth Ghiscari War, rival Sarnori kings supported either the Freehold or the Old Empire of Ghis.[1] Lomas Longstrider observed a fallen obelisk upon which were carved depictions of the Ghiscari's allies, with the tallest of them being helmeted Tall Men.[1]
The Sarnori saw the twilight of their power during the Century of Blood. Ignoring the Dothraki, they fell prey to their depredations. When the Tall Men finally unified it was too late, as the Dothraki khalasars burned their cities to the ground. Today only in Saath, the sole Sarnori city that is not a ruin, do men still call themselves Tagaez Fen and worship their gods. There are less than twenty thousand of them, when once they numbered in the millions.[1]