House Footly of Tumbleton is a noble house of the Reach, holding the market town of Tumbleton at the northeastern edge of the region, some sixty leagues southwest of King's Landing near the border with the crownlands. Their sigil of silver caltrops on black and their words, Tread Lightly Here, form a canting heraldry: the caltrop, a spiked iron device strewn across roads and fields to lame horses and men alike, makes the warning both literal and martial. The house is sworn to the Tyrells of Highgarden and holds a seat of some strategic consequence, sitting astride the road that links the Reach to the capital.
The house's most consequential hour came during the Dance of the Dragons, when Tumbleton declared for the blacks. Lord Footly opened his gates to the Targaryen loyalists, only for the Two Betrayers, Ser Hugh Hammer and Ser Ulf the White, to turn their dragons Vermithor and Silverwing upon the town in a shattering act of treachery. Lord Footly's soldiers threw down their arms, but were bound and slaughtered. Lord Footly himself was cut down by Ser Jon Roxton, who claimed his wife Lady Sharis as a prize of war. The town burned, and what survived was shaped largely by the regent Sharis Footly, who ruled in the name of the posthumous son she bore six months after the fighting ended, a dark-haired infant she proclaimed her late husband's heir.
By the time of A Game of Thrones, the house has long since rebuilt from the ashes of the Dance. Tumbleton remains a market town of modest prosperity, and the Footlys answer the Tyrell muster when the War of the Five Kings draws the great lords of the Reach to Renly Baratheon's banner.