The Planet in Brief

Some two-million-plus years ago, a planet was transported to its current orbital path following that of Earth's and provided the native Priest-Kings with an accessible world to stock their planet with more interesting species to fill their vivaria. Many of the plants and animals found on Gor are unknown to Earth; some originating on Earth, but adapting to the strange, new gravity of Gor, and the harshness of the world itself. These voyages, known as the Voyages of Acquisition, are made by the Priest-Kings when they see a need for new materials.

"The Voyages of Acquisition," said Misk, "take place normally when we need fresh material from Earth, for our purposes." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 125.

There, too, are beings on Gor, rational and intelligent, that are non-humankind. An example of such beings are the Spider People. As a note, the Priest-Kings consider neither humans or Kurii to be rational beings, and in fact, relate one to the other as being quite similar. Considering the state of the world as it is on today's Earth, I have to agree; humans are really less hairy Kurii.

Ancestral Roots

Far more intelligent than man, despite that they are in fact overgrown cockroaches, the Priest-Kings are the true masters of Gor. The arrival of man brought them a new animal to experiment on, which they did; the Muls Al-Ka and Ba-Ta are prime examples of the experiment of genetic mutation and manipulations. Another is the ancient mankind of some world perhaps not even of earth, that were raised to be the carriers of the precious Gur; nothing is ever said of the origin of these beings, although they language is that of the Old Gorean, purported to have been created by the Initiates. The Priest-Kings filled their vivaria with humankind, releasing them to the planet which serves as a large-scale vivaria. To the Priest-Kings, humankind are but low animals. From the safety of their nests, they study mankind much in the same way as we did when we were children with our ant farms. Species from many planets were obtained and transported to this planet called Gor by the Priest-Kings in what they rationalize as "studying for the betterment of each species."

"On the whole," he said, "we Priest-Kings do not interfere with the affairs of men. We leave them free to love and slay one another, which seems to be what they enjoy doing most." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 124.

"According to our calculations, which may of course be mistaken, life as you know it on the earth will destroy itself within the next thousand years." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 124.

"As I said," went on Misk, "man is subrational. Consider what would happen if we allowed him free technological development on our world."
      I nodded. I could see that from the Priest-Kings' point of view it would be more dangerous than handing out automatic weapons to chimpanzees and gorillas. Man had not proved himself worthy of a superior technology to the Priest-Kings. I mused that man had not proved himself worthy of such a technology even to himself."
      "Indeed," said Misk, "it was partly because of this tendency that we brought man to the Counter-Earth, for he is an interesting species and it would be sad to us if he disappeared from the universe.""
      "I suppose we are to be grateful," I said."
      "No," said Misk, "we have similarly brought various species to the Counter-Earth, from other locations." — Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 124-125.

Failed experiments? Certainly, and with little thought the Priest-Kings would terminate the existence of such. Some were evaporated to dust; others ended up in dissection chambers for their corpse to be studied. Man was no different in their eyes, and would on occasion, destroy a city simply as a statement to mankind that they were growing too fast and too bold, and to keep mankind humble before their gods.

"Occasionally on Gor we destroy a city, selecting it by means of a random selection device. This teaches the lower orders the might of Priest-Kings and encourages them to keep our laws."
      "But what if the city has done no wrong?" I asked.
      "So much the better," said Misk, "for the Men below the Mountains are then confused and fear us even more — but the members of the Caste of Initiates, we have found, will produce an explanation of why the city was destroyed. They invent one and if it seems plausible they soon believe it. For example, we allowed them to suppose that it was through some fault of yours — disrespect for Priest-Kings as I recall — that your city was destroyed." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 123.

"But perhaps I shall show you the Scanning Room someday. We have four hundred Priest-Kings who operate the scanners, and we are accordingly well informed. For example, if there is a violation of our weapons laws we usually, sooner or later, discover it and after determining the coordinates put into effect the Flame Death Mechanism." … — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 125.
      "But much of our knowledge comes from our implants," said Misk. "We implant humans with a control web and transmitting device. The lenses of their eyes are altered in such a way that what they see is registered by means of transducers on scent-screens in the scanning room. We can also speak and act by means of them, when the control web is activated in the Sardar." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 126.

"You would kill the man?"
      "It is only a human," said Sarm. … — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 137.
      "You are a murderer," I said.
      "No," said Sarm, "I am a Priest-King." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 138.

Cultures from parts of Earth such as ancient Rome and Greece, the Vikings, the Native Americans, especially of the Sioux nations, the Eskimo peoples of the north, are easily recognizable. Again, this "official" site wished to infer the cultures of mankind as part of the near-prehistoric, yet mankind did not exist 15 some odd million years ago. The diversity of historical time frames of these cultures co-exist as present day Gor. The medical practices of such cities as Ar, are comparable to the very advanced technology of ancient Rome and Greece. Vikings thrived on Earth after the fall of the Roman Empire and into the medieval periods. The Mongols and Huns mixed in between ancient Rome and the beginning of the medieval eras. Native American and South American nomadic tribes, the Muslim and African nomadics, in existence for centuries far longer than history was recorded. All of these peoples, during their timelines on Earth, were collected by the Priest-Kings and brought to Gor. It is this diverse group of peoples, as well that make up the Gor as it exists currently.

These people still live somewhat akin to their native cultures; the Arabic tribes within the Sahara-like Tahari, the ancient Norsemen within the rugged, cold Torvaldsland, the Innuit in the arctic north, the ancient nomads upon the plains of Turia, the Marsh Arabs nestled within the rence islands of the Vosk delta, and so forth. The ancient Greeks and Romans built cities mirroring their own on Earth; Ar is representative of Rome, for example. The Viktel Aria, that might road leading to Ar, is

"On the whole, I liked the people I met, and I was confident that they were largely of Earth stock, that their ancestors had been brought to the planet in Voyages of Acquisition. Apparently after having been brought to the planet, they had simply been released, much as animals might be released in a forest preserve, or fish stocked free in a river. The ancestors of some of them might have been Chaldeans or Celts or Syrians or Englishmen brought to this world over a period of centuries from different civilizations. But the children, of course, and their children eventually became simply Gorean. In the long ages on Gor almost all traces of Earth origin had vanished. Occasionally, however, an English word in Gorean, like 'axe' or 'ship', would delight me. Certain other expressions seemed clearly to be of Greek or German origin. If I had been a skilled linguist, I undoubtedly would have discovered hundred of parallels and affinities, grammatical and otherwise, between Gorean and various of the Earth languages. Earth origin, incidentally, was not a part of the First Knowledge, though it was of the second." — Tarnsman of Gor, pages 44-45.

Upon various readings I found something interesting — a speculation that the world of Gor was somehow related to a city on Earth, known today as Firouzabad or Firuzabad (Sassanid Middle Persian Ardasher-Khwarrah, or The Glory of Ardasher). Firuzabad is a city in Iran located in Fars province south of Shiraz. The town is surrounded by a mud wall and ditch. Alexander of Macedonia destroyed the original city of Gor. Centuries later, Ardashir I, founder of the Sassanid Dynasty, revived the city before it was ransacked in the Arab invasion of the seventh century.

Ardeshir's new city was known as Khor Ardeshir, Ardeshir Khurah and Shāhr-i Gōr. It had a circular plan so precise in measurement that the Persian historian Ibn Balkhi wrote it to be "devised using a compass". It was protected by a trench some 50 meters in width and 2 kilometers in diameter. Fire Tower of FirouzabadThe city had four gates; to the north was the Hormoz Gate, to the south the Ardeshir Gate, to the east the Mithra Gate and to the west the Bahram Gate. The royal capital's compounds were constructed at the center of a circle some 450m in radius. At the center point of the city was a Zoroastrian fire temple (pictured here), 30m high and spiral in design, thought to have been the architectural predecessor of the Great Mosque of Samarra of Iraq. During the reign of Azud al-Dawla of the Daylamite dynasty in the 10th century, the old name of the city — Gor, was changed. In New Persian spoken at the time Gōr1 had come to mean grave. King Azud al-Dawla, as the story goes, found it distastful to reside in a "grave." Per his instruction, the city's name was changed to Peroz-abad, "City of Victory." Since then, the city has been known by variations of that name, to include Firuzabad (Middle Persian Firuzabad).

1Editor's Note: The spelling is Gōr, denoted with a long-vowel symbol ("-") over the "O" and not "Gor" as another site would have readers believe. The actual pronunciation and Latin interpretation is really Gur. Interestingly, sifting through my many sources, both book references and online references, the very unreliable Wikpedia is one of the extreme few that chose to use the word "Gor" in its summaries. However, the circular-square buildings of this city (and many similarly designed cities by the Parthians), the gates (north, south, et al) were with a doubt, the inspiration for the cylinder cities on the fantasy planet Gor. One last interesting thing to note, is that Persian term Gur was possibly inspiration for John Norman to describe the honeylike substance fed to the Mother of the Priest-Kings right before her death.

"The ancient Gur town situated about 55 miles (88 km) south of Shiraz, in the Fars region of south-central Iran. The town is said to have been founded by the Sasanian king Ardashir I (AD 224–241) in commemoration of his victory over the Parthian king Artabanus. The Sasanian town was circular in plan and had a high tower topped by a fire altar in the centre. The ruined palace of Ardashir I in the town is the oldest extant example of Sasanian architecture. The name of the town was changed in the middle of the 10th century because the citizens felt that Gur (Persian: "grave") had unpleasant connotations. Pop. (1986) 34,433." — Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

On Aging

The Priest-Kings, upon bringing live human specimens to Gor, subjected them to a serum, known by the human population as the Stabilization Serums. Developed first by the Priest-Kings, the serum lasts for an unspecified amount of time. Such a serum was needed to allow them to study the various cultures of the human world without losing their subjects due to an early death.

In allowing humans a certain degree of technological advancements in medicine, the Priest-Kings afforded enough information which lead the Caste of Physicians to the discovery of a similar serum, although less effective and inferior in quality to the serum of the Priest-Kings. Sometimes, such serums fail to work at all, or wear off after a few hundred years. Matthew Cabot is an example of one given the Priest-Kings serum, and had been on Gor serving these insectile gods for well over six hundred (600) years.

"Strangely, though it has now been six years since I left the Counter-Earth, I can discover no signs of ageing or physical alteration in my appearance. I have puzzled over this, trying to connect it with the mysterious letter, dated in the seventeenth century, ostensibly by my father, which I received in the blue envelope. Perhaps the serums of the Caste of Physicians, so skilled on Gor, have something to do with this, but I cannot tell. — Tarnsman of Gor, pages 218-219.

"Of course," said Misk, "but we have allowed them to develop in many areas — in medicine, for example, where something approximating the Stabilization Serums has been independently developed."
      "What is that?" I asked.
      "You have surely not failed to notice," said Misk, "that though you came to the Counter-Earth more than seven years ago you have undergone no significant physical alteration in that time."
      "I have noticed," I said, "and I wondered on this."
      "Of course," said Misk, "their serums are not as effective as ours and sometimes do not function, and sometimes the effect wears off after only a few hundred years."
      "This was kind of you," I said.
      "Perhaps," said Misk. "There is dispute on the matter." — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 124.

"You spoke of knowing the Cabots for four hundred years," I said.
      "Yes," said Misk, "and your father, who is a brave and noble man, has served us upon occasion, though he dealt only, unknowingly, with Implanted Ones. He first came to Gor more than six hundred years ago."
      "Impossible!" I cried.
      "Not with the stabilization serums," remarked Misk. — Priest-Kings of Gor, page 126.

In Closing

For now, Gor remains, at least to those of modern culture, a barbaric world ruled with steel, primarily male dominated; yet it is modern humans of Earth perceived by Goreans to be the ones truly barbaric. Slavery is politically and morally correct for the Gorean peoples, not simply because it is Gor, but because of the diverse cultures brought to Gor which indeed even on Earth, slavery was acceptable.

 

 

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Disclaimer

These pages are not written for any specific home, but rather as informational pages for those not able to get ahold of the books and read them yourself. Opinions and commentaries are stricly my own personal views, therefore, if you don't like what you are reading — then don't. The information in these pages is realistic to what is found within the books. Many sites have added information, assuming the existences of certain products and practices, such as willowbark and agrimony for healing, and travel to earth and back for the collection of goods. I've explored the books, the flora, the fauna, and the beasts, and have compiled from those mentioned, the probabilities of certain practices, and what vegetation mentioned in the books is suitable for healing purposes, as well as given practicalities to other sorts of roleplaying assumptions.