Where the Warrior's Sons drew highborn knights, the Poor Fellows recruited from the landless and the desperate, swearing poverty and service to the Faith in exchange for arms more often a begging-bowl and cudgel than a knight's sword; ostensibly raised to guard septons and pilgrims on the roads of the Seven Kingdoms, in practice they became, by the archmaesters' own account, nearly as much a hazard to travelers as a protection.
Maegor the Cruel set a bounty of a silver stag on every Poor Fellow's scalp — a smaller sum than the gold dragon he offered for a Warrior's Son, a difference the smallfolk of the day are said to have resented on both counts — and hunted the Stars alongside the Swords until Jaehaerys I's settlement of 48 AC dissolved the order formally, along with its knightly counterpart.
Two and a half centuries of quiet followed, broken when a barefoot High Septon risen from the Poor Fellows' own tradition re-armed the order in King's Landing during a season of famine and royal weakness this chronicle can confirm occurred, while declining to walk any further down that particular road than the published books have gone themselves.