Jogos Nhai

The Jogos Nhai are a nomadic people who live east of the Dothraki, on the other side of the Bone Mountains.

They are famous for their odd-looking mounts, stripled black-and-white horses called Zorses.

Jogos Nhai can be found farther west, traveling to the market of Vaes Dothrak.

In the books
The Jogos Nhai have been mentioned in passing since the first novel, and in much the same context: Daenerys Targaryen observes them in the markets of Vaes Dothrak.

Most of their culture and history wasn't described until the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014). The Jogos Nhai are a plains people, whose lands are east of the Dothraki and north of Yi Ti. If Yi Ti is Essos's fantasy analogue of Imperial China, the Jogos Nhai are loosely their fantasy analogue of the Mongol hordes (as the Dothraki are more similar to the Turkic mounted hordes farther west). They have been the arch enemies of Yi Ti for thousands of years, sacking hundreds of towns and dozens of cities. Every now and again a powerful emperor of Yi Ti will lead an expedition to the northern plains against them, killing hundreds of thousands, but the surviving Jogos Nhai always melt away into the plains and after a few generations build up to their old strength and continue raiding.

The plains of the Jogos Nhai are drier and less fertile than the Dothraki Sea, with sparser grasses, so they ride hardy beasts bred for endurance, not performance: "zorses", made by breeding horses with strange horselike creatures from southern Yi Ti. Zorses can survive on weeds for months and travel long distances without food or water.

Also due to this more scarce landscape, the plains cannot sustain huge hordes like the Dothraki khalasars to the east (which can number in the tens of thousands). Instead they travel in smaller tribal bands linked by blood. Without the advantage of numbers, the Jogos Nhai are more raiders than warriors like the Dothraki: they rely on lightning raid and maneuver, striking Yi Tish towns to plunder and burning what they can't take with them, but then fleeing at the approach of large Yi Tish armies. In contrast, large Dothraki hordes usually meet their enemies head on in open battle. When large expeditionary armies from Yi Ti are sent against them, typically the Jogos Nhai will retreat back into the plains and resort to guerrilla warfare, harassing supply lines to starve enemy armies until they are forced to return home or be destroyed.

Each Jogos Nhai tribe is commanded by a jhat (war chief) and a moonsinger (combination priestess, healer, and judge). The jhats lead war and raid, while the moonsinger rules over other matters (apparently this means they oversee merchants and trade as well). The Dothraki are usually divided into around 20 or so khalasars at any given time, the largest numbering in the tens of thousands (40,000 is considered larger than most), but they are usually squabbling with each other and fighting over plunder. Jogos Nhai tribes are smaller and thus more numerous, but at the same time, they all strictly follow the religious rule that no Jogos Nhai tribe may war upon another (the Dothraki have a similar rule but it is only enforced within the borders of their capital city, Vaes Dothrak).

While no Jogos Nhai may war upon each other, they are always in essentially a state of constant low-level war with all of their neighbors: most often Yi Ti to the south, but they also have a bitter and longstanding feud with the Hyrkoon city-states guarding the mountain passes to the est. To the east they raid around Nefer, and to the north they raid any Ibbenese foolish enough to try to establish a foothold on the coasts. Being more of a raider than warrior culture, these "wars" are most like constant raiding - full scale united expeditions by thousands of Jogos Nhai are a rare occurrence. Whenever their neighbors are weakened by civil war or foreign invasion, they will opportunistically launch even more raids against them. It is impossible to make peace with the Jogos Nhai - not only because they don't want to but because all of their numerous small tribes are not politically unified. In contrast, the Dothraki are not always at war with their neighbors, as the Free Cities learned that they can arrange "peace" with the Dothraki by just gifting them large amounts of tribute. The Jogos Nhai just take the tribute and continue raiding anyway.

Like the Dothraki, the Jogos Nhai nomads have no ships and no interest in the sea. Similar to the Dothraki, the Ibbenese have free run of their coasts, though their lands are poorer so the Ibbenese don't really try to carve out enclaves there, sticking to the nearby fishing grounds.

Physically, the Jogos Nhai are a head shorter tahn the tall Dothraki, more squat, with large heads and small faces, and skin more swarthy and sallow. Men and women have pointed skulls, because they have the custom of binding their infants heads, considering this attractive. Jogos Nhai men shave their heads into mohawks of hair, while women shave their heads totally bald.

The Jogos Nhai follow the Moonsinger religion, which has some views on gender which are strange to men from Westeros. Every tribe's jhat can only be a man, and every moonsinger (priestess/healer/judge) has to be a woman. However, the Jogos Nhai do not see gender as biologically inherent: if a biological male wants to be a moonsinger he must dress and live as a woman, and if a biological female wants to be a jhat she can, but she must dress and live as a man. Subsequently a female-born jhat will be treated in all respects as a man, to the point that everyone around them refers to the jhat in male terms, making it very difficult for outsiders to determine what his original biological gender was. The Jogos Nhai could arguably said to be transgender characters within the A Song of Ice and Fire mythos, given how different their attitudes about gender are (comparable to the hijra of India or Two Spirits Native Americans).

The Jogos Nhai are rare west of the Bones but not unheard of: apart from in Vaes Dothrak, several are observed as gladiators in the fighting pits of Slaver's Bay. Moreover, the founding population of Braavos were escaped slaves from around the world taken by the Valyrians, some of them Jogos Nhai. It was their moonsingers who guided the escaping slaves with their stolen fleet to the location of Braavos, and for this reason were held in high esteem; their descendants and the moonsinger religion are fairly prominent in modern-day Braavos (in the live action TV series Arya mentions in passing that she traveled along "Moonsinger lane", though no individual Moonsingers have been mentioned in Braavos yet in the main novels).