Gorean Military
Ar, Besieged
"Ar, beleagured and dauntless, was a magnificent sight. Its splendid, defiant shimmering cylinders loomed proudly behind the snowy marble ramparts, its double walls - the first three hundred feet high; the second, separated from the first by twenty yards, four hundred feet high - walls wide enough to
drive six tharlarion wagons abreast on their summits. Every fifty yards along the walls rose towers, jutting forth so as to expose any attempt at scaling to the fire from their numerous archer ports. Across the city, from the walls to the cylinders, I could occasionally see the slight flash of sunlight on the swaying tarn wires, literally hundreds of thousands of slender, almost invisible wires stretched in a
protective net across the city. Dropping the tarn through such a maze of wire would be an almost impossible task. The wings of a striking tarn would be cut from its body by such wires."
1:chap 15 "Beyond the walls were Pa-Kur's lines of investment, set forth with all the skill of Gor's most experienced siege engineers. Some hundreds of yards from the wall, just beyond crossbow
range, a gigantic ditch was being dug by thousands of siege slaves and prisoners. When completed, it would be fifty or sixty feet wide, and seventy or eighty feet deep. In back of the ditch slaves were piling up the earth which had been removed from the ditch, packing and hardening it into a
rampart. On the summit of the rampart, where it wascompleted, were numerous archer blinds, movable wooden screens to shield archers and light missile equipment."
1:chap 15
"Between the ditch and the walls of the city, under the cover of darkness, thousands of sharpened stakes had been set,inclined towards the walls. I knew that the worst of such devices would be invisible. Indeed, several of the spaces between the stakes were probably occupied by covered pits,
more sharpened stakes being fixed in the bottom. Also, half buried in the sands among the stakes and set in wooden blocks would be iron hooks, much like those used in ancient times on
Earth and sometimes called spurs. Behind the great ditch, separated from it by some two hundred yards, there was a smaller ditch, perhaps twenty feet wide and twenty feet deep,also with a rampart formed from the excavated earth. Surmounting this rampart was a palisade of logs, sharpened at
the tips. In the walls, every hundred yards or so, was a log
gate. "1:chap 15
"Here and there among the tents siege towers were being constructed. Nine towers were in evidence. It was unthinkable that they should top the walls of Ar, but with their battering rams they would attempt to break through at the lower levels. Tarnsmen would make the attack at the summit of the walls. When it came time for Pa-Kur to attack, bridges would be constructed over the ditches. Over these
bridges the siege towers would be rolled to the walls of Ar; over them his tharlarion cavalry would march; over them his horde would flow. Light engines, mostly catapults and ballistae, would be transported over the ditches by harnessed tarn teams."
1:chap15
"One aspect of the siege which I knew would exist but which I obviously could not witness would be the sensitive duel of mine and counter mine which must be taking place between the
camp of Pa-Kur and the city of Ar. There would be numerous tunnels being worked even now towards the walls of Ar, and, from Ar, counter-tunnels to meet them. Some of the most
hideous fighting in the siege would undoubtedly take place far under the earth in the cramped, foul, torchlit confines of those serpentine passageways, some of them hardly large
enough to permit a man to crawl. Many of the tunnels would be collapsed and others flooded. Given the depth of the foundations of Ar's mighty walls and the mantle of rock on
which they were fixed, it would be extremely unlikely that her walls could be successfully undermines to the extent of bringing down a significant section, but it was surely possible that if one of the tunnels managed to pass unnoticed beneath the ramparts, it could serve to spill a line of
soldiers into the city at night, enough men to overcome a gate crew and expose Ar to the onslaught of Pa-Kur's main forces."
1:chap15
"Sometimes the forces of Pa-Kur drove the warriors
of Ar back to the very walls of the city, forcing them
through the gates. Sometimes the forces of Ar would drive
the men of Pa-Kur back against the defensive stakes, and once
they drove them to take refuge across the now constructed
siege bridges spanning the great ditch."
1:chap15 "On the tenth day of the siege small engines, such as covered
catapults and ballistae, were flown across the ditches by
tarn teams and soon were engaged in artillery duels with the
engines mounted on the walls of Ar. Simultaneously, exposed
chains of siege slaves began to move the stake lines forward."
1:chap15or16 "Meanwhile,at several points in the city and at randomly
selected times, picked tarnsmen of Pa-Kur, each of whose
tarns carried a dangling, knotted rope of nine spearmen,
dropped to the wires and the tops of cylinders, landing their
small task forces of raiders. These task forces seldom
managed to return, but sometimes they were outstandingly"
1:
Warfare "Also, it might be noted that most Gorean warfare is carried out largely by relatively small groups of professional soldiers, seldom more than a few thousand in the field at a given time, trained men, who have their own caste.
Total warfare, with its arming of millions of men, and its broadcast slaughter of hundreds of populations, is Gorean neither in concept nor in practice.
Goreans, often castigated for their cruelty, would find such monstrosities unthinkable. Cruelty on Gor, though it exists, is usually purposeful, as in attempting to bring, through discipline and privation, a young man to manhood, or in teaching a female that she is a slave. "
Book 14: Fighting Slave of Gor, page 145
Gorean Military Technology "Towards the end of my training I always fought with shield
and helmet. I would have supposed that armour, or chain mail
perhaps, would have been a desirable addition to the
accoutrements of the Gorean warrior, but it had been
forbidden by the Priest-Kings. A possible hypothesis to
explain this is that the Priest-Kings may have wished war to
be a biologically selective process in which the weaker and
slower perish and fail to reproduce themselves. This might
account for the relatively primitive weapons allowed to the
Men Below the Mountains. On Gor it was not the case that a
cavern-chested toothpick could close a switch and devastate
an army. Also, the primitive weapons guaranteed that what
selection went on would proceed with sufficient slowness to
establish its direction, and alter it, if necessary."
1:49'ish
"...weapons technology is controlled to the point that the most common devices of war
are the scrossbow and lance. Further, there is no mechanized transportation or communication equipment, ordetection devices such as the radar and sonar so much in evidence in the military establishments of your world. "... it is the Flame Death merely to possess a weapon of the interdicted sort. Sometimes bold individuals create or acquire such war materials and sometimes for as long as a year escape the Flame Death, but sooner or later they are struck down."
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, pages 31-32
"Besides the spear and sword, the crossbow and longbow were permitted, and these latter weapons perhaps tended to redistribute the probabilities of survival somewhat more broadly then the former. It may be, of course, that the Priest-Kings controlled weapons as they did not simply because they feared for their own safety. I doubted that they stood against one another, man to man sword to sword, in their holy mountains, putting their principals of selection to the test of their own cause." Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 49
Free Women "For one thing she was not of the warriors and was thus not entitled to this badge of station; indeed, her wearing it, as she was a mere female, would be a joke to outsiders and an embarrassment to men; it would belittle its significance for them, making it shameful and meaningless. The insignia of men, like male garments, become empty mockeries when permitted to woman. This type of thing leads eventually both to demasculinization of men and the defeminization of females, a perversion of nature disapproved of generally, correctly or incorrectly, by Goreans. "
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, page 56.
Value Of Skill "Of what value, really, is it to be able to bring down a running man with the great bow at two hundred yards, to throw the quiva into a two-hort circle at twenty paces, to wield a sword with an agility others might bring to the handling of a knife? Of what use are such dreadful skills? Then I reminded myself that such skills are often of great use and that culture, with its glories of art, and music and literature, can flourish only within the perimeters of their employments. Perhaps there is then a role for the lonely fellows on the wall, for the border guards, for the garrisons of far-flung outposts, for the guardsmen in the city treading their lonely rounds. All these, too, in their humble, unnoticed way, serve. Without them the glory is not possible. Without them even their critics could not exist."
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, page 131
SOUL "Tears are not unbecoming to the soldier,' said Callimachus. `The soldier is a man of deep passions, and emotion. Many men cannot even understand his depths. Do not fear your currents and your powers. In the soldier are flowers and storms. Each is a part of him, and each is real. Accept both. Deny neither.'" Book 16: Guardsman of Gor, page 238 "I had been so much a fool as to be sad. That is not the mood in which to enter battle, even the battle which one knows one cannot win, even the ultimate battle in which oneknows one is doomed to defeat. Do not be sad. Better to take the field with laughter, with a joke, with a light heart, with a buoyant heart, or to go forward with sterness, or in fury, or with hatred, or defiance, or calculation, but never with self pity, never with sadness. Never such things, never them! The warrior does not kill himself or aid others in the doing of it. It is not in the codes." Book 24: Vagabonds of Gor, page 446 "I am English. And I recalled another vic- tory, in another time, on a distant world. I supposed that in time to come men might, on this holiday, show their wounds to slaves and wondering children, saying to them, "These I had in SeKara." Would this battle be sung as had that one? Not in England, I knew. But on Gor, it would. And yet songs 'I told myself, are lies. And those that had died this day did not sing. And yet, I asked myself, had they lived, would they not have sung? And I told myself, I thought yes. And so, then, I asked Myself, might we not then sing for them, and for ourselves as well, and could there not be, in some way that was hard to understand, but good, truth in songs? " 6:281 ""What is death?" I asked him.
He looked at me. "It is nothing," he said. "If death is nothing," I said, "then the little that life is must be much indeed." He looked away. "You are a Warrior," he said. "You have your wars, your battles."
5:chap23
Custom "The Supreme Initiate, as he called himself, raised a shield and then set it at his feet. He then raised a spear and set it, like the shield, at his feet. This gesture is a military convention employed by commanders on Gor when calling for a parley or conference. It signifies a truce, literally the temporary putting aside of weapons. In surrender, on the other hand, the shield straps and the shaft of the spear are broken, indicating that the vanquished has disarmed himself and places himself at the mercy of the conqueror." Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 187
"Whereas the military camp is usually laid
out in a set of concentric squares, reflecting the fourfold
principle of military organisation customary on Gor, the
merchant camp is laid out in concentric circles, the guards'
tents occupying the outermost ring, the craftsmen's, strap-
masters', attendants and slaves' quarters occupying inner
rings, and the centre being reserved for the merchant, his
goods, and his body-guard."
Book 1: after 190
"Still I would not speak, not while he controlled
a weapon; unfortunately, the first thing a Gorean warrior is
likely to do to the stranger in his tent is kill him, the
second is to find out who he is. "
1:chap15
Strategy
"At first even the countryside was depressing, for the men of Ar, as a
military policy, had devasted and area of some two or three
hundred pasangs on their borders, cutting down fruit trees,
filling wells, and salting the fertile areas. Ar had, for
most practical purposes, surrounded itself with an invisible
wall, a bleached region, forbidding and almost impassable to
those on foot."
1:190?
"I now stood and faced some six Taurentians, who stood in the defensive picket formation, three men forward in this case, and, in the interstices, three men back. This permits the men in reserve to move into the forward line to form a solid line, or, if the first line withdraws, to have space to take its place. It allows a great deal of mobility and, on the level of squad tactics, has its affinity to the Torian Squares; the space allows the swordsmen, of course, room in which to handle their weapons, room in which to properly attack or defend themselves; in this case I expected the center man to engage me, defending himself on the whole, while the flanking men would strike; should one of these three fall, of course, his place would be taken by one of the men in the reserve line."
5:342'ish
"The Gorean phalanx, like its predecessors of Earth, consisted of lines of massed spearmen, carrying spears -343- of different lengths, forming a wall of points; it attacked on the run, preferably on a downgrade, a military avalanche, on its own terrain and under optimum conditions, invincible; the Torian Squares had bested the phalanx by choosing ground for battle in which such a formation would break itself in its advance. The invention and perfecting of the Torian Squares and the consequent attempts to refine and improve the phalanx, failures, were developments which had preceded the use of tharlarion and tarn cavalries, which radically changed the face of Gorean warfare. Yet, in the day of the tharlarion and tarn, one still finds, among infantries, the Torian Square; the phalanx, though its impact could be exceeded only by the tharlarion wedge or line, is now unknown, except for a defensive relic known as the Wall, in which massed infantry remains stationary, heroically bracing itself, when flight is impossible, for the devastating charge of tharlarion."
5:343
It was true that the long bow is a weapon of peasants, who make and use them, sometimes with great efficiency. That face, in inself, that the long is a peasant weapon, would make many Goreans, particularly those ont familiar with the bow, look down upon it. Gorean warriors, generally drawn from the cities, are warriors by blood, by caste; moreover, they are High Caste; the peasants, isolate in their narrow fields and villages, are Low Caste; indeed, the Peasant is regarded, by those of the cities, as being little more than an ignoble brute, ingnorant and superstitious, venal and vicious, a grubber in the dirt, a plodding animal, an ill-tempered beast, something at best cunning and treacherous; and yet I knew that in each dirt-floored cone of straw that served as the dwelling place of a peasant and his family, there was, by the fire hole, a Home Stone; the peasants themselves, though regarded as the lowest caste on all Gor by most Goreans, call themselves proudly the ox on which the Home Stone rests, and I think their saying is true.
Peasants, incidentally, are seldom, except in emergencies, utilized in the armed forces of a city; this is a futher reason why their weapon, the long bow, is less known in the cities, and among warriors, than it deserves to be.
6:2
The Gorean, to my mind, is often, though not always, (bound by historical accidents and cultrual traditions, which are then often rationalized into a semblance of plausibility. For example, I had even heard arguments ot the effect that pleasants used the long bow only because they lacked the manufacturing capablity to produce crossbows, as though they could not have traded their goods or sold animals ot obtain crossbows, if they wished. Further, the heavy, bronze-headed spear and the short, double-edged steel sword are traditionally regarded as the worthy, and prime, weapons of the Gorean fighting man, he at least who is a true fighting man; and similarly traditionally, archers, who slay from a distance, not coming to grips with their enemy, with their almost invisible, swiftly moving shafts of wook, those mere splinters, are regarded as being rather contemptible, almost on the periphery of warriorhood; villains in Gorean epics, incidentally, when not of small and despised castes, are likely to be archers; I had heard warriors say that they would rather be poisoned by a woman than slain by an arrow.
6:2-3
Suddenly in the darkness before me there reared up a warrior of Port Kar. He struck down at me with the double-edged sword. Had he known I was a warrior he might not have used his blade improperly. I caught his wrist, breaking it. He howled in pain. I seized up his sword. Another man thrust at me with a spear. I took it in my left hand and jerked him forward, at the same time moving my blade in a swift, easy arc, transversely and slightly upward, towards him. It passed through his throat, returning me to the on-guard position. He fell to the matting, his helmet rolling, lost in his own blood. It is an elementary stroke, one if the first taught a warrior.
6:54 Tersites had been permitted that once to address the council because he, though thought mad, had once been a skilled shipwright. Indeed, the galleys of Port Kar, medium and heavy class, carried shearing blades, which had been an invention of Tersites. These are huge quarter-moons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, anchored into the frame of the ship itself. One of the most common of (-page 136-) naval strategies, other than ramming, is oar shearing, in which one vessel, her oars suddenly shortened inboard, slides along the hull of another, whose oars are still outboard, splintering and breaking them off. The injured gally then is like a broken-winged bird, and at the mercy of the other ship’s ram as she comes about, flutes playing and drums beating, and makes her strike amidships. Recent galleys of Cos and Tyros, and other maritime powers, it had been noted, were now also, most ofte, equipped with shearing blades. 6:136
The fighting ship, incidentally, the long ship, the ram-ship, has never been, to my knowledge, in Port Kar, or Cos, or Tyros, or elsewhere on Gor, rowed by slaves; the Gorean fighting ship always has free men at the oars.
6:140
At the far edge of the piazza, in one of the bordering canals, nosing forward to take a berth between two tiled piers, we saw a ram-ship, medium class. Her mast, with its long yard, was lashed to the deck. Doubtless her sail was stored below. These are the arrangements when a galley moves through the city, or when she enters battle.
6:146
There was some polite striking of the left shoulder with the right hand in the room, which is a common Gorean applause, though not of the warriors, who clash weapons.
6:177
The eyes of the ship, painted on either side of the bow, would now have turned toward the opening of the harbor of Telnus. Ships of Gor, of whatever class or type, always have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the prow, as in tarn ships, or, as in the Rena, as in round ships, on either side of the bow. It is the last thing that is done for the ship before it is first launched. The painting of the eyes reflects the Gorean seaman’s belief that the ship is a living thing. She is accordingly given eyes, that she may see her way.
6:183
TARNS:
The Goreans believe, incredibly enough, that the capacity to master a tarn in innate and that some men possess this characteristic and that some do not. One does not learn to master a tarn. It is a matter of blood and spirit, of beast and man, of a relation between two beings which must be
immediate, intuitive, spontaneous. It is said that a tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and that those who are not die in this first meeting. My first impression was that of a rush of wind and a great snapping sound, as if a giant might be snapping an enormous towel or scarf; then I was cowering, awestricken, in a great winged shadow, and an immense tarn, his talons extended like gigantic steel hooks, his wings sputtering fiercely in the air, hung above me, motionless except for the beating of his wings.
"Stand clear of the wings," shouted the Older Tarl.
I needed no urging. I darted out from under the bird. One stroke of those wings would hurl me
yards from the top of the cylinder. The tarn dropped to the roof of the cylinder and regarded us with his bright black eyes. Though the tarn, like most birds, is suprisingly light for its size, this primarily having to do with the comparative hollowness of the bones, it is an extremely powerful bird, powerful even beyond what one would expect from such a monster. Whereas large Earth birds, such as the eagle, must, when taking flight from the ground, begin with a running start, the tarn, with its incredible musculature, aided undoubtedly by the somewhat lighter gravity of Gor, can with a spring and a sudden flurry of its giant wings lift both himself and his rider into the air. In Gorean, these birds are sometimes spoken of as Brothers of the Wind.
The plumage of tarns is various, and they are bred for their colors as well as their strength and
intelligence. Black tarns are used for night raids, white tarns in winter campaigns, and multicolored, resplendent tarns are bred for warriors who wish to ride proudly, regardless of the lack of camouflage. The most common tarn, however, is greenish brown. Disregarding the disproportion in size, the Earth bird which the tarn most closely resembles is the hawk, with the exception that it has a crest somewhat in the nature of a jay's.
Tarns, who are vicious things, are seldom more than half tamed, and like their diminutive earthly counterparts, the hawks, are carnivorous. It is not unknown for a tarn to attack and devour his own rider. They fear nothing but the tarn-goad. They are trained by men of the Caste of Tarn Keepers to respond to it while still young, when they can be fastened by wires to the training perches. Whenever a young bird soars away or refuses obedience in some fashion, he is dragged back to the perch and beaten with the tarn-goad. Rings, comparable to those which are fastened on the legs of the young birds, are worn by the adult birds to reinforce the memory of the gobbling wire and the tarn-goad. Later of course, the adult birds are not fastened, but the conditioning given them in thier youth usually holds, except when they become abnormally disturbed or have not been able to obtain food. The tarn is one of the two most common mounts of a Gorean warrior; the other is the high tharlarion, a species of saddle-lizard, used mostly by clans who have never mastered tarns. No one in the City of Cylinders, as far as I knew, maintained tharlarions, though they were supposedly quite common on Gor, particularly in the lower areas - in swampland and on the deserts Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 51.
War Ships of Gor "It must be understood that the ship itself is the weapon."
6:192 ram-ship (noun): war galley, having up to 3 banks of oars as well as masts and sails; named for the battering rams on the prow tarn ship (noun): a type of ram-ship, being long and narrow, with a shallow draft, a straight keel, a single lateen-rigged mast, and a single bank of oars; at the prow, below the waterline, is a ram shaped like a tarn's head; it also carries light catapults, shearing blades, and other weaponry Gorean Ships.
Medium class Ram-Ships Ram-ships, also known as a long-ships, of medium class have a keel
length of 80-100 Gorean Feet, with a beam of 10 to 15 feet. Single
Masted however is predominately an oared vessel and is the Gorean
war ship. Eyes are painted on the prow as the sailor considered his
vessel a living thing. Tur-wood is used for the galley frames, beams,
clamps, posts and hull planking. The wood of the Ka-la-na tree serves
for the capstans and Mastheads. Masts, spars and deck planking are all
made of the needled trees..the evergreens. Rudders and Oars made of
temwood. The oarsmen are always freemen never slaves. It Gathers it
name from the "ram" she carries, usually Iron Clad and rides just
below the water line. In War, or when the galley enters the City, the
Mast taken down and sails stored below deck. They carry Catapults
capable of tossing loads of burning pitch at the other vessel. They also
carry spearmen with javelins, usually tarred and flaming and bowmen,
ready to send a barrage of flaming arrows over to the offending
vessel. Shearing blades are also always affixed forward on the vessel.
These are huge quarter moons of steel, anchored to the frame itself.
One of the most common naval strategies other than the ramming, is
to shear the oars, leaving the opposing vessel like a broken winged
bird. Medium class for a long ship, or ram-ship, in determined not by freight capacity but by keel length and width of beam; a medium-class long ship, or ram-ship, will have a keel length of from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet Gorean; and a width of beam of from ten to fifteeen feet Gorean.
6:127
The Dorna, a tarn ship, is not untypical of her class. Accordingly I shall, in brief, describe her. I mention, however, in passing, that a great variety of ram-ships ply Thassa, many of which, in their dimensions, their lines, their rigging and their rowing arrangements, differ from her considerably. The major difference, I would suppose, is that between the singly-banked and the most doubly- or trebly-banked vessel. The Dorna, like most other tarn ships, is single-banked; and yet her oar power is not inferior to even the trebly-banked vessels; how this is I shall soon note. The Dorna, like most tarn ships, is a long, narrow vessel of shallow draft. She is carvel-built, and her planking is fastened with nails of bronze and iron; in places, wooden pegs are also used; her planking, depending on placement, varies from two to six inches in thickness; also, to strengthen her against the shock of ramming, four-inch-thich wales run longitudinally about her sides. She carrieds a single, removable mast, with its long yard. It is lateen rigged. Her keep, one hundred and twenty-eight feet Gorean, and her beam, sixteen feet Gorean, mark her as heavy class. Her freeboard area, that between the water line and the deck, is five feet Gorean. She is long, low and swift. She has a rather straight keel, and this, with her shallow draft, even given her size, makes it possible to beach her at night, if one wishes. It is common among Gorean seamen to beach their craft in the evening, set watches, make camp, and launch again in the morning.
The Dorna’s ram, a heavy projection in the shape of a tarn’s beak, shod with iron, rides just below the water line. Behind the ram, to prevent it from going too deeply
(-page 192-) into an enemy ship, pinning the attacker, is, shaped like the spread crest of a tarn, the shield. The entire ship is built in such a way that the combined strength of teh keel, stempost and strut-frames centeres itself at the ram, or spur. The ship is, thus, itself the weapon.
The bow of the Dorna is concave, sloping down to meet the ram. Her stern describles what is almost a complete semicircle. She has two steering oars, or side rudders. The sternpost is high, and fanlike; it is carved to represent feathers; the actual tail feathers of a tarn, however, would be horizontal to the plane, not vertical; the prow of the tarn ship resembles the ram and shield, though it is made of painted wood; it is designed and painted to resemble the head of a tarn.
6:192 . There are in the building of ships, as in other things, values to be weighed. The ram-ship is not built for significant sail dependence or maximum seaworthiness. She is built for speed, and the capacity to destroy other shipping. She is not a rowboat but a racing shell; she is not a club, but a rapier.
6:206
Round-Ships "On the other hand, whereas the round ships do not carry rams and are much slower and less maneuverable than the long ships, they are not inconsequential in a naval battle, for their deck areas and deck castles can accommodate springals, small catapults, and chain-slings onagers, not to mention numerous bowmen, all of which can provide a most discouraging and vicious barrage, consisting normally of javelins, burning pitch, fiery rocks and crossbow quarrels. "
6:133
Round-ships, which are not round of course, have deep holds for
merchandise. They carry heavier, permanent rigging and supports
more sail, being generally two Masted. The round-ship of course is not
round but does have a much wider beam to its length, a one to six
ratio. They can freight between one hundred and one hundred and fifty
tons by earth measure or 6,000 to 7,500 stone Gorean below deck.
The Round-ship is a much slower vessel. Although the Round-ships do
not carry Rams they are not inconsequential in a naval battle. Their
deck area and deck castles can accommodate signals, small catapults
and chain sling onagers, not to mention several bowmen which can
provide a most discouraging barrage of arrows and javelins. Tur-wood
is used for the galley frames, beams, clamps, posts and hull planking.
The wood of the Ka-la-na tree serves for the capstans and Mastheads.
Masts, spars and deck planking are all made of the needled trees..the
evergreens. Rudders and Oars made of temwood. Although they carry
oarsmen, generally slaves they are more of a sailing vessel. They can
sail windward taking full advantage of their lateen rigging, which is
particularly suited to windward work. They have a lower keel to beam
ratio, making it very sea worthy and more difficult to break apart at
high seas. . Besides having large numbers of unchained, armed men in their rowing holds, these round ships, moreover, were, below decks, and in the turrets and the stem and stern castles, crowded with armed, able-bodied men, citizens of Port Kar who had swarmed aboard, that they might fight. There were crews on these ships armed with grappling irons and each of the ships carried two or more of the spiked planks. These are actually like gangplanks, some flve feet in width, to be fastened at one end to the round ship and intended to be dropped, with their heavy spiked ends, into the deck of an enemy ship. The round ship has a substantially higher freeboard area than the ram-ship, which is lower, and so the spiked plank is feasible. Commonly, of course, it is the round ship, with her normally small, free crews, which attempts to evade boarding.
6:262 The common strategy with a round ship is to shear and board, because, normally, one wishes not to sink the ship but take it as a prize
6:263
Raider Class A beautiful ship, sleek and well lined. It carries 40 oars double manned.
Oars are generally 9 feet in length and narrower so that they may cut
and sweep at great speed more rapidly than the wider bladed oar.
This, and the two men on each oar and the lightness of the vessel
made her a very swift ship. The keel to beam ratio is one to eight, also
designed for swiftness. It is eighty gorean feet long with some ten
Gorean wide. The rowers sat within the hull proper, facing aft. The
thole ports have covers on the inside and are on swivels which allows
them to be closed when the ship is using sail. The sail is squarish,
though somewhat wider at the bottom. Its Mast could also be lowered
and fitted into two blocks of wood, wedged in at the top block by
means of a hammer. The single sail hangs straight from a spar of
needle wood. It can be shortened or let out by reefing ropes. The
ability to shorten or let out the sail in a matter of moments is a highly
desirable trait. Some raiders have two or three Masts..with lateen
rigging to take them into the wind. The ship is like all others, clinker
built, being constructed of over lapping planks or strakes of the needle
tree again. The frame then fits within them. Between the strakes
tarred rope serves as caulking, with tar covering them as well. Outside
planks too are painted with tar to protect it from the sea and ship
worms. The ships tends to be painted with black and red in irregular
lines so that at night, with the Mast down, and among the shadows, it
is very difficult to detect. Being clinker built it allows the ship to literally
twist and bend in vicious seas, the hull planking can be bent more than
a Gorean foot without breaking. The decking of the ship is loose so
that it may be pulled aside for greater cargo space. She is fast, strong
and cargo capable making her an excellent ship for raiding. Delta Brigade
A rebel group which quietly fought Cosians with 'resistance' tactics during their occupation of Ar. Their trademark was a bloody 'delka' mark often slashed into the skin of their victims. The existence of this unorganized group began from a comment made in a tavern by Tarl Cabot. The rumor led others, independent of each other, to use similar tactics, which convinced the Cosians of a more concerted effort against them.
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, pages 176-189
Laager
Also known as wagon fort, it is a defensive wagon formation utilized by wagon peoples. Wagons are arranged in a circle, end to end, tongues inward, and chained together, the front axle of one wagon chained to the rear axle of the next. The encampment, the draft animals, and any accompanying livestock are protected within.
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, page 43
Book 23: Renegades of Gor, page 7
Last Spear
The last hunter in a band of hunters in the Voltai Ranges to throw his spear. This spearman is the weakest of the party and will, if all spears have not killed the prey and it attacks, be the one sacrificed to allow his fellows to escape.
Book 3: Priest Kings of Gor, page 20 Loot pit
A holding place for captured free women awaiting collars and branding during the military occupation of a city.
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, page 190 Margin of Desolation
An area north of Ar that was made into a wilderness thousands of pasangs deep. Wells were poisoned, and fields burned and salted to prevent the approach of armies from the north. It was allowed to re-vegetate and re-populate. Some believe the reason is to bring more arable land under cultivation; others say that the eyes of Ar turned north toward the powerful Salerian Confederation.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 129
Book 7: Captive of Gor, page 255
Book 11: Slave Girl of Gor, page 145 Shield, signal
The men of Torvaldsland use different colored shields as a means of communication. Two that are universal are the red shield which means, 'war', and the white shield meaning, 'peace'.
Book 9: Marauders of Gor, pages 70 and 181 Tarn drums
Drums used in a march during war; the signals are used to control flying tarn armies.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, pages 130 and 191
Tarn wire
Razor wire strung between the walls of a city to protect it from aerial attack.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 162 Tarnburg
A city in the southern, more civilized, ranges of the Voltai, it is essentially a mountain fortress located two hundred pasangs to the north and east of Hochburg. This high city is the home of Dietrich of Tarnburg, a renowned military strategist, the victor in multiple engagements, and the innovator of several military techniques, defenses, formations, etc.
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, pages 31-33 Runner Class A lighter version of the Tarn-ship, a long narrow vessel of shallow
draft. The ship is carvel-built, planking held in place with nails of bronze
and iron. The planks are 2-6 horts in thickness to strengthen her from
ramming. She has a single removable Mast, with a long yard. It has
lateen rigging and the ship is built long low and for swiftness. The ram
is below the water surface, shod with iron and can fold back. The
entire ship is built in such a way that the combined strength of her
keel, stempost, and strut frames center on the ram or spur. Thus, the
ship itself is the weapon. It has shearing blades, quarter moons of
steel, affixed to the hull to shear off oars of the offending vessel. The
Runner is lightly weaponed with movable turrets midship. It carries two
catapults, two sling onagers and eight springals. Its oars are 27 to 30
feet gorean and weight about 1 stone a foot. The oarsmen are in
groups of three men to a bench. This being the smaller of the tarn
ships it is most often used for scouting. Information given by Kar Vonnar
We swung to port. Our ram, now, threatened the Voskjard's ship. The archers scattered behind
the bulwarks. Consternation held sudden sway upon her decks. Oars, like startled limbs, not in
unison, unevenly, rose from the water. We saw rudder activity, not synchronized between the
port and starboard rudders. Oars, one and two, and more, at a time, began to slash down at the
water. She, too, swung to port. Then she had slipped away behind the shattered bow of the Leda.
We had not charge her. Off the starboard bow lay a galley of the Voskjard, rocking on the water,
seemingly somnolent, but we knew, in an instant, if we exposed our flank to her, she would come
alive, springing to the attack.
"Beware the sleen that seems to sleep," is a Gorean proverb. pg 50 Guardsman of GOR
Tarn Stuff "Tarnsmen, riders of the great tarns, called Brothers of the Wind, are masters of the open sky, fierce warriors whose battleground is the clouds and sky; they are not forest people; they do not care to stalk and hunt where, from the darkness of trees, from a canopy of foliage, they may meet suddenly, unexpectedly, a quarrel from the crossbow of an invisible assailant.
7:63'ish "The element of the tarnsman is not the green glades, and the branches; it is the clouds, the saddle and the sky; his steed is the tarn, his field of battle, strewn with light and wind, higher than mountains, deeper than the sea, is the very sky itself. Such men do not care to venture creeping into the shadows of forests, pursuing scattered game. Victorious, they roar with laughter and, hauling on the onestraps of their tarn harness, take flight. "
7:190'ish "The small bow, interestingly, has never been used among tarnsmen; perhaps this is because the kaiila is almost unknown above the equator, and the lesson of kaiilaback fighting has not been much available to them; perhaps it is because of tradition, which weighs heavily in Gorean life, and even in military affairs for example, the phalanx was abandoned only after more than a century of attempts to ----------***---------- preserve and improve it; or perhaps the reason is that range is commonly more important to tarnsmen in flight than maneuverability of the bow. I suspect, however, that the truest reason is that tarnsmen, ,never having learned respect for the small bow, tend to despise such a weapon, regarding it as unworthy a Warrior's hand, as being too puny and ineffective to win the approval of a true Gorean fighting man. "
5:343 (after) "The tarnsman commonly carries, strapped to the saddle, a Gorean spear, a fearsome weapon, but primarily a missile weapon, and one more adopted to infantry. The tarnsmen, of course, centuries before, had been developed from land forces; it had always seemed to me that the tarn cavalries of Gor might be considerably improved by a judicious alteration of weapons and training practices; however, I had never had a command of tarnsmen of my own, and my ideas were of little interest, even to the tarnsmen of Ko-ro-ba, my city."
5:343{after)
Something of the same joy of the rider, and mystique of the rider, exists on Gor in connection
with the tarn as it existed on Earth in connection with the horse. For example, if you have thrilled
to the movements and the power of a fine steed, you have some conception of what it is to be
aflight on tarnback. There is the wind, the sense of the beast, the speed, the movements, now in
all dimensions, the climb, the dive, soaring, turning, all in the freedom of the sky! There is here,
too, a oneness of man and beast. pg 138 Renegades Of GOR I had been so much a fool as to be sad. That is not the mood in which to enter battle, even the battle which one knows one cannot win, even the ultimate battle in which knows one is doomed to defeat. Do not be sad. Better to take the field with laughter, with a joke, with a light heart, with a buoyant heart, or to go forward with sternness, or in fury, or with hatred, or defiance, or calculation, but never with self pity, never with sadness. Never such things, never them! The warrior does not kill himself or aid others in the doing of it. It is not in the codes. pg 446 Vagabonds of GOR Tarnsmen:
A special type of warrior is the tarnsman. Tarnsmen ride the mighty tarns, giant
birds, also called the Brothers of the Wind. A tarn resembles a hawk but with a crest
like a jay. It is surprisingly light for its size due to the hollowness of its bones. It is an
extremely powerful bird that can fly from the ground with a spring and sudden wing
flurry. It is a diurnal creature. It is carnivorous and commonly eat only what they
catch themselves, usually antelopes and wild bull. If enough food is available, they will
eat half their weight. But, near the end of the Gorean series, tarns begin being trained
to eat prepared meat. A tarn is seldom more than half-tamed, and it is not unknown
for a tarn to attack its own rider. Tarns fear nothing but the tarn goad. The plumage varies and many are bred for their color. The most common color is greenish-brown. Black tarns are used for night raids and white ones for winter raids. Multi-colored tarns are used by proud warriors who do not care for camouflage. War tarns have their talons shod in steel. There are also draft tarns, used for transporting cargo. There are also saddle tarns, used as transport. There is even a jungle tarn, a rare creature, that is gloriously plumaged and comes from the tropical reaches of the
Cartius. The capacity to master a tarn is thought to be innate. It cannot be learned. Warriors
who wish to become tarnsmen are taken to meet a tarn. The warrior must be
accepted by the tarn or he will be eaten by the mighty bird. A tarn must be controlled
by a strong master, and if the master ever gets weak or helpless, the tarn may kill
him. Tarnsmen have a few tools to use to control tarns. The tarn goad is a metal rod, about two feet long, with a leather loop attached. It has a switch on the handle for on and off, and emits an electric shock in a sparkled of yellow sparks. It will hurt your flesh but won't mark it if you are hit by one. A tarn goad may also be used to direct the tarn. One hits the bird in the direction opposite to the one you wish to go. But this is imprecise and there is a danger in using the goad
too much as it will become less effective. A tarn whistle, also called a tarn call, is used
to call specific tarns. It has one note and summons only one tarn. Tarns are commonly guided by a throat strap, to which are attached six leather streamers, or reins. They are fixed in a metal ring on the forward portion of the saddle. The reins are of different colors but you learn them by ring position and not color. Each rein attaches to a small ring on the throat strap and the rings are evenly spaced. One draws on the rein which is attached to the ring which most closely
resembles the direction you wish to go. To land or lose attitude, use the four strap
which exerts pressure on a ring beneath the tarn's throat. To rise in flight or gain
altitude, use the one strap which is on the back of the tarn's neck. The throat strap
rings are numbered clockwise. Letting the reins hang on the saddle ring, with no
pressure on the throat strap, is the signal for a constant and straight flight. Tarns have a five-rung leather mounting ladder, on the left side, which folds up at
the side of the saddle. You strap yourself into the saddle with a strap, a saddle belt.
Tarn saddles are wide enough to accommodate a bound female slave across it. Tarn
saddles are rather large with saddle packs, weapon sheaths and paired slave rings.
Tarn baskets may have guidance attachments to control the tarn from the basket,
similar to the normal guidance from a saddle. There are many sizes and varieties of
baskets. The most common basket is flat-bottomed, square-sided, and about four
feet deep. One of a young tarnsman's first mission is commonly to capture a slave from
another city for his personal quarters. There are a few ways to capture a girl from
your tarn. A tarn may grab the girl in its talons and then land. The warrior will
dismount, get the girl from its talons, bind her and then fasten her to a saddle ring. A
tarnsman may fly low and hit a girl with a wing so that she is sent sprawling. The
warrior then dismounts and captures her. Another tarnsman might hit a girl with the
butt of a spear. Others fly low and rope a girl, using the braided leather ropes familiar
to all tarnsmen. A raiding tarnsman usually carry his weapons, rations, a compass, maps, binding fiber and extra bowstrings. They commonly use spears and crossbows from tarnback. A
tarns can even carry a knotted rope of seven to ten men without difficulty. This is
helpful in attacks on a city. There are some excellent quotes about tarnsmen as well. "The spirit of the tarn must not be broken, not that of the war tarn. He is
trained to the point where it is necessary for a strong master to decide
whether he shall serve him or slay him. You will come to know your tarn, and
he will come to know you. You will be as one in the sky, the tarn the body,
you the mind and will. You will live in an armed truce with the tarn. If you
become weak or helpless, he will kill you. As long as you remain strong, his
master, he will serve you, respect you, obey you." "Once one has been a tarnsman, one must return again and again to the
birds."
SHIPS AND SAILORS (#36, Version 4.0)
Thassa: Thassa is the Gorean name for the vast ocean to the west of the known
world of Gor. Thassa simply means "the sea." Thassa extends westward an unknown
distance. The part of Thassa a hundred pasangs or so west of the isalnds of Cos and
Tyros is known as the World's End. It is a legendary place as no one has ever sailed
there and returned. Some believe that Thassa is endless while others say the end of
the world is sheer and a ship will plunge over the edge. In the maelstroms southwest
of Tyros, shattered ship planking is sometimes found. Like any ocean, Thassa can be
calm in places and at different times, but it can also be very fierce. Numerous ships ply
the waters of Thassa and also the rivers and waterways of the land. Ships: The word "ship" is the same in Gorean as it is in English. There are two basic
types of ship on Gor, round ships and tarn ships. Both types are commonly double
ruddered and shallow drafted vessels. Most sailing, except by round ships, is done in
the spring and summer. In Se'Kara, especially later in the month, there are often high
seas on Thassa. It is also a common custom for ships to remain within sight or in
clear relation to the shore. It is also common to beach crafts at night and launch again
in the morning. In the open sea, ships keep one another, where possible, on their port
sides, thus passing to starboard. Signal flags, pennons and squares, in mixed colors
and designs, are flown on the stem-castle and stern-castle lines. They are used for
communication between ships while at sea. Round ships: A round ship, also known as a merchant ship, has a deep hold for merchandise. It is an oared vessel with a heavy, permanent rigging. It is generally two-masted and the masts are not removable. It also has more sail than a war ship.
The main mast is a bit forward of amidships and the foremast is some four or five
yards abaft of the ship's yoke. Both are lateen sails and the yard of the foresail is
about half the length of the yard of the mainsail. The rowing areas is closed to the air
and commonly carries from one to two hundred or more slaves in the rowing hold.
Slaves commonly row in round ships though some cities have begun to experiment
with using free men. A round ship is not actually round but has a much wider ratio of
its beam to its length of keel, about one to six. A war ship will have a one to eight
ratio. Round ships are slower and less maneuverable than war ships but can still be
used in a naval battle. They do not carry rams but their decks can hold numerous
other ship weapons like springals and catapults. Round ships differ among themselves
considerably. They can be broken down into three basic categories: light galley,
medium class, and heavy class. A medium class ship can freight about 100 to 150
tons below its decks. A merchant ships is commonly identified with their name at
three points on the ship, starboard bow, port bow, and stern. Tarn ships: Tarns ships are also known as long ships, ram-ships, or war ships. There is a great variety of ram-ships varying in their dimensions, lines, rigging and rowing arrangements. Usually, war ships have a removable mast with its long yard. It most commonly sails only with a fair wind. The principal weapons of the ramship are the ram and shearing blades. The ram in usually in the shape of a tarn's beak, shod with iron. It rides just above the waterline. The freeboard area, between the water line and
deck, is five Gorean feet. Behind the ram is the spread crest of a tarn, a shield to
prevent the ram from going too deeply into another ship. Most ships have a concave
bow to facilitate the placing of the ram mount and ram. A ship is built so the combined
strength of the keel, stempost and strut-frames centers at the ram. Shearing blades
are huge quartermoons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, and anchored into the
frame of the ship. The ship slides along another ship and shears off their oars. Most
maritime powers use shearing blades. Its deck width is twenty-one Gorean feet. The
rowing deck is open to the air. The oars are set in groups of three and three men sit a
single bench. The benches slant obliquely back toward the stern castle. The three oars
are usually of varying lengths, the most inboard being the longest. The oars weigh
about one stone a foot and their length varies from 27 to 30 Gorean feet. Unlike the
round ships, a war ship is never rowed by slaves. Tarn ships come in many different
varieties and may also be divided into light, medium and heavy class. Medium class is
determined not by freight capacity but by keel length and width of beam. A medium
class war ship will have a keel length of eighty to one hundred and twenty Gorean feet
and a beam width of ten to fifteen Gorean feet. A heavy class would have a keel of
128 Gorean feet and a beam of sixteen Gorean feet. Lower Hold: Beneath the first hold of a ship is the lower hold. This is a tiny crawl space, about eighteen inches, between the deck of the first hold and the curved hull of the ship. It is divided by its keel. It is unlit, cold and damp. It commonly contains sand for ballast and the sump, or bilge. The foul and briny water accumulates there and the bilge is pumped once a day in calm weather, more often in bad weather. It may be
used for the storage of perishables or to keep items cool. It may also be used to
punish slaves. A slave, placed into the lower hold with its darkness and the urts that
live there, will quickly learn to be obedient. Sails: Ships carry different sails for different conditions. The yard itself, from the mast, must be lowered and hoisted so the sails can be removed or attached. There is no practical way to take in, or shorten, a sail as in square rigged craft. But, lateen sails permit sailing closer to the wind, great maneuverability and great efficiency in tacking. The triangular lateen sail, on its single sloping yard, is also beautiful and that means a
lot to Goreans. There are three main types of sails and all lateen. They differ mainly by
their size. The largest is the "fair weather" sail which is used with light winds. A smaller
sail is the "tarn" sail used with strong winds astern. It takes its name from the tarn
ships where they are commonly found. It is also called a "storm" sail as it is an escape
sail to flee heavy storms. There is also a "tharlarion" sail, a smaller version of the tarn
sail. It is more manageable and used most often in swift, brutal, shifting winds.
Eyes on ships: All ships have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the
prow as in tarn ships or on either side of the bow. It is the last thing done to a ship
before it is first launched. It is done by the shipwright. The eyes reflect the belief that
the ship is a living thing and needs to see its way. Sea Men: A Keleustes is the man who marks time for the rowers. He strikes a great copper drum with a leather cushioned mallet to call time. He may also use a pounding block instead of the drum. He can mark a variety of different types of time, depending on how fast the ship needs to go. He is also known as the hortator. He reports
directly to the oar-master. The oar-master reports to the captain.
Only free men row war ships. Slaves may row on merchant ships. Gorean seamen
recognize ships with the same ease they recognize faces.
Pirates are a threat on Thassa and the rivers of Gor. Green is the color of pirates
because in the bright sun, reflecting off the sea, green ships are nearly invisible. They
make their entire ships green including the hulls, sails, oars and ropes.
The exact expressions port and starboard do not exist in Gorean though there are
equivalent expressions. Sailors of Cos refer to the left side of the ship by its port of
destination and the right side by port of registration. This changes when both ports
are the same and then the left side is the "harbor side."
There is a common ritual done before a ship leaves port. They say "Ta-Sardar-Gor
and then "Ta-Thassa" and finally pour wine, oil and salt into the sea. This is to wish the
ship luck on its journey. Tersites: Tersites is a half-blind shipwright, considered to be mad by most Goreans. He has been long scorned on Gor though he may be a genius. His radical ideas on ship design have been sometimes accepted and sometimes ignored. He created shearing
blades which are used by many different navies. He also created a new ship design,
one extremely different from conventional Gorean ship design theory. The ship is
deep-keeled and square rigged as most ships are not. It carries a foremast though it
was a ramship. It also possessed great oars that requires multiple men to handle
rather than a single man per oar. It carries a single oar slung at the vessel's sternpost
and not the normal double rudders. Its ram is carried high out of the water. This ship
was intended to sail beyond the World's End. Samos of Port Kar believes Tersites to
be a genius and commissioned him to construct that ship. Before the ship can be
completed though, Tersites burns the ship, destroying all of the ship's plans as well.
He then vanishes afterwards. No one knows why he did what he did. That mystery is
never resolved in the books. Women on Ships: The presence of free women on a ship makes some sailors uneasy and they are usually regarded as bad luck. Free women though do travel on merchant ships. Female sailors do not exist on Gor. Slave girls on a ship though are welcomed.
Many ships even have a Luck Girl, a special slave who acts as mascot and is regarded
as good luck. Most slaves on a ship available to the crew for their pleasure. This
helpos make a long journey pass much more pleasant. Slaves may be kept above or below the decks. On the deck, girls are kept in small deck cages that are fastened on the deck. At night and in rough weather, they may be covered with a tarpaulin. The girls kept below the decks are in slave platforms that essentially have a wooden top and bottom and all four sides covered by mesh. Each
space is about twenty-five inches wide, eighteen inches high, and six feet inches long.
Urts are a problem below decks so the mesh is meant to keep them away from the
girls. Being kept above decks is the preferred place for slaves. Ship Warfare: Tarn ships are the primary war ships on Thassa. Merchant ships try to avoid war if at all possible. They will normally try to be accompanied by tarn ships if they feel the situation will be dangerous. The primary weapon of the tarn ships is their ram. Their secondary weapon is their shearing blades. The medium and heavy class ships carry the shearing blades. They are huge quartermoons of steel, seven feet high and five inches wide. Ships then have a variety of items that serve as tertiary
weapons. When entering battle, war ships take their masts down and store their sails below
decks. The bulwarks and decks of the ship are often covered with wet hides to
prevent fires from starting or spreading. War trumpets and message flags are used to
send signals between ships. Various weapons are placed upon the deck such as
springals, catapults, and cahin-sling onagri. Springals fire javelins. Catapults fire a
variety of items such as clay globes filled with burning pitch or flaming oils. Bowmen
are also common. They protect themselves behind wicker shields and may fire torch
arrows. The ship bow is a short bow, stout and maneuverable. Its rate of fire is
superior to the crossbow and it is easy to use in the tight quarters of a ship. Other Water Craft: There are a wide variety of other water craft used on the rivers,
lakes, marshes and canals of Gor. Barges, coracles, skiffs, river galleys, punts and
more exist. Barges are often used on rivers and are simply constructed of layered
timbers of wood. They are commonly towed by teams of river tharlarion. Marsh
barges are different from normal barges. They are narrow ships with high, curved
prows. They are anchored at both stem and stern. The anchor hooks are curved and
three-pronged, lighter than would be in other ships. They are oared vessels, rowed by
slaves. They do not use a keleustes. Instead, the oar-master verbally counts for the
rowers. Marsh barges are used mostly by those of Port Kar. Coracles are like leather
tubs propelled by the thrusting of a pole. They are used by the poor in the canals of
Port Kar. The rencers of the Vosk delta often use rush craft. They are formed of
pliant, tubular, lengthy Vosk rushes and bound with marsh vine. They have a slightly
curved stern and prow. They are small, light and narrow, barely large enough for one
man. They are rowed by a triangular bladed tem-wood paddle. A punt is a small,
square-ended, flat-bottomed boat. It is poled and commonly kept on larger vessels
for small chores. Ports: Most Gorean ports and islands are not managed by the Merchant's Caste but by magistrates appointed by the city council. Exchange islands, also known as free
islands, in Thassa are administered as free ports by members of the Merchant's
Caste. Such islands include Teletus, Tabor, Farnacium, Hulneth, Asperiche, Anango,
Ianda, Hunjer, Scagnar, and Skjern. Torvaldsland ships: The ships of Torvaldsland are different from most of the other Gorean ships that exist. Their ships are smaller craft, clinker built, with overlapping, bending planking. They are also known as serpent ships. They are more seaworthy
than other Gorean ships. They must be baled frequently and are not well suited for
cargo. They are better raiding vessels. Their sails are square and cannot sail as close
to the wind as lateen sails. But, the square sail makes it possible to do with a single
sail. You can take in and let out the canvas as needed. The ships have a prow on each
end, making it easier to beach them. The steering oar, on the starboard side, is most
effective in the normal "forward" direction. It is very hard to ram their ships because
of their small size and ability to rapidly reverse direction. Torvaldsland ships are fast.
With a fair wind, they can cover 200 to 250 pasangs in a day. On some light raiding
galleys, the tarnhead at the prow is hinged. This helps to remove the weight from the
prow's height and gives greater stability in high seas. It is always at the prow in harbor
or when the ship enters an inlet or river so it can make its strike. A white shield hung
on the mast is a sign of truce. This galley, one of my swiftest, the Tesephone of Port Kar, had forty oars, twenty to a side. She was single ruddered, the rudder hung on the starboard side. Like others of her class, she is of quite shallow draft. Her first hold is scarcely a yard in height. Such ships are not meant for cargo, lest it be treasure or choice slaves. They are commonly used for patrols, and swift communication. The oarsmen, as in most Gorean war galleys, are free men. Slaves serve commonly only in cargo galleys. The oarsmen sit their thwarts on the first deck, exposed to the weather. Most living, and cook- ing, takes place here. In foul weather, if there is not high wind, or in excessive heat, a canvas coverilig, on poles, is sometimes spread over the thwarts. This provides some shelter to the oarsmen. It is not pleasant to sleep below decks, as there is little ventilation. The "lower hold" is not actually a hold at all, even of the cramped sort
of the first hold. It is really only the space between the keel and the deck of the first hold. It is approximately an eighteen-inch crawl space, unlit and cold, and damp. This crawl space, further, in its center, rather amidships
and toward the stern, contains the sump, or bilge. In it the water which is inevitably shipped between the calked, tarred, expanding, contracting, sea-buffeted wooden planking, is gathered. It is commonly foul, and briny. The bilge is pumped once a day in calm weather; twice, or more, if the sea is heavy. The Tesephone, like almost all galleys, is ballasted with sand, kept in the lower hold. If she carries much cargo in the first hold, forcing her lower in the water, sand may be discarded. Such galleys normally function optimally with a freeboard area of three to
five feet. Sand may be added or removed, to effect the optimum conditions for
either stability or speed. Without adequate ballast, of course, the ship is at the mercy of the sea. The sand in the lower hold is usually quite cool, and, buried in it, are commonly
certain perishables, such as eggs, and bottled wines. Book 8 pages 19-20
Types of Ships: There are two basic types of ship on Gor, round ships and tarn
ships, also known as merchant ships and war ships. A round ship has a deep hold for merchandise. It is an oared vessel with a heavy,
permanent rigging. It is generally two-masted and the masts are not removable. It
also has more sail than a war ship. A round ship is not round but has a much wider ratio
of its beam to its length of keel, about one to six. A war ship will have a one to eight
ratio. Round ships are slower and less maneuverable than war ships but can still be
used in a naval battle. Round ships differ among themselves considerably. They can be
broken down into three basic categories: light galley, medium class, and heavy class. Tarns ships are also known as long ships, ram-ships, or war ships. War ships have
removable masts. It most commonly sails only with a fair wind. The principal weapons
of the ramship are the ram and shearing blades. The ram in usually in the shape of a
tarn’s beak, shod with iron. It rides just above the waterline. Behind the ram is the
spread crest of a tarn, a shield to prevent the ram from going too deeply into another
ship. A ship is built so the combined strength of the keel, stempost and strut-frames
centers at the ram. Shearing blades are huge quartermoons of steel, fixed forward of
the oars, and anchored into the frame of the ship. The ship slides along another ship
and shears off their oars. Most maritime powers use shearing blades. Tarn ships come
in many different varieties and may also be divided into light, medium and heavy class. Sailors: A Keleustes is the man who marks time for the rowers. He strikes a great
copper drum with a leather cushioned mallet to call time. He can mark a variety of
different types of time, depending on how fast the ship needs to go. He is also known
as the hortator. He reports directly to the oar-master. The oar-master reports to the
captain. Only free men row war ships. Slaves may row on merchant ships. Gorean seamen
recognize ships with the same ease they recognize faces. Women on Ships: The presence of free women on a ship makes some sailors uneasy
and they regard them as bad luck. Free women though do travel on merchant ships.
There are no female sailors. Slave girls on a ship are welcomed. Many ships even have
a Luck Girl, a special slave regarded as good luck. Eyes on Ships: All ships have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the
prow as in tarn ships or on either side of the bow. It is the last thing done to a ship
before it is first launched. The eyes reflect the belief that the ship is a living thing and
needs to see its way.
Seamen now climbed to the high yard, loosening the brail ropes, to drop the
sail. It was the tarn sail. Gorean galleys commonly carry several sails, usually falling into three main types,
fair-weather, "tarn", and storm. Within each type, depending on the ship, there may be varieties. The Tesephone
carried four sails, one sail of the first type, two of the second, and one of the third. Her sails were, first, the fair-weather
sail, which is quite large, and is used in gentle winds; secondly, the tarn sail, which is the common sail most often
found on the yard of a tarn ship, and taking its name from the ship; third, a sail of the same type as the tarn sail, and, in
a sense, a smaller "tarn" sail, the "tharlarion" sail; this smaller "tarn" sail, or "tharlarion" sail, as it is commonly called,
to distinguish it from the larger sail of the same type, is more manageable than the standard, larger tarn sail; it is used
most often in swift, brutal, shifting winds, providing a useful sail between the standard tarn sail and the storm sail;
fourthly, of course, the Tesephone carried her storm sail; this latter sail is quite small, and is used to run the ship,
fleeing, before heavy storms; it is, usually, an "escape" sail; if, upon occasion, a ship could not run before a heavy sea,
it would be broken in the crashing of the waves. Gorean galleys, in particular the ram-ships, are built for speed and
war. They are long, narrow, shallow-drafted, carvel-built craft. They are not made to lift and fall, to crash among
fifty-foot waves, caught in the fists of the sea's violence. In such a sea literally, in spite of their beams and chains, they
can break in two, snapping like the spines of tabuk in the jaws of frenzied larls. In changing a sail, the yard is lowered,
and then raised again. In the usual Gorean galley, lateen rigged, there is no practical way to take in, or shorten, sail, as
with many types of square-rigged craft. In consequence, the different sails. The brail ropes serve little more, in the
lateen-rigged craft, than to raise the sail to its yard, permitting its being tied there, or to drop the sail, opening it to the
wind. On the other hand, the lateen-rigged galley, with its triangular sail on the long, sloping yard, has marvelous
maneuvering capabilities, and can sail incredibly close to the wind. Its efficiency in tacking more than compensates for
the convenience of a single, multipurposed sail. And, too, perhaps it should be mentioned, the lateen rigging is very
beautiful. Book 8 pages 33-34 This galley, one of my swiftest, the Tesephone of Port Kar, had forty oars, twenty to a side. She was single ruddered,
the rudder hung on the starboard side. Like others of
her class, she is of quite shallow draft. Her first hold is scarcely a yard in height. Such ships are not meant for cargo,
lest it be treasure or choice slaves. They are commonly used for patrols, and swift communication. The oarsmen, as
in most Gorean war galleys, are free men. Slaves serve commonly only in cargo galleys. The oarsmen sit their
thwarts on the first deck, exposed to the weather. Most living, and cook-
ing, takes place here. In foul weather, if there is not high wind, or in excessive heat, a canvas coverilig, on poles, is
sometimes spread over the thwarts. This provides some shelter to the oarsmen. It is not pleasant to sleep below
decks, as there is little ventilation. The "lower hold" is not actually a hold at all, even of the cramped sort of the first
hold. It is really only the space between the keel and the deck of the first hold. It is approximately an eighteen-inch
crawl space, unlit and cold, and damp. This crawl space, further, in its center, rather amidships and toward the stern,
contains the sump, or bilge. In it the water which is inevitably shipped between the calked, tarred, expanding,
contracting, sea-buffeted wooden planking, is gathered. It is commonly foul, and briny. The bilge is pumped once a day
in calm weather; twice, or more, if the sea is heavy. The Tesephone, like almost all galleys, is ballasted with sand, kept
in the lower hold. If she carries much cargo in the first hold, forcing her lower in the water, sand may be discarded.
Such galleys normally function optimally with a freeboard area of three to five feet. Sand may be added or removed, to
effect the optimum conditions for
either stability or speed. Without adequate ballast, of course, the ship is at the mercy of the sea. The sand in the lower
hold is usually quite cool, and, buried in it, are commonly
certain perishables, such as eggs, and bottled wines. Book 8 pages 19-20
In those days I learned to master the high tharlarion, one of which had been assigned to me by the caravan's tharlarion
master. These gigantic lizards had been bred on Gor for a thousand generations before the first tarn was tamed, and
were raised from the leathery shell to carry warriors. They responded to voice signals, conditioned into their tiny brains
in the training years. Nonetheless, the butt of one's lance, striking about the eye or ear openings, for there are few
other sensitive areas in their scaled hides, is occasionally necessary to impress your will on the monster. The high tharlarions, unlike their draft brethren, the slow-moving, four-footed broad tharlarions, were carnivorous.
However, their metabolism was slower than that of a tarn, whose mind never seemed far from food and, if it was
available, could consume half its weight in. a single day. Moreover, they needed far less water than tarns. To me, the
most puzzling thing about the domesticated tharlarions, and the way in which they differed most obviously from wild
tharlarions and the lizards of my native planet, was their stamina, their capacity for sustained movement. When the
high tharlarion moves slowly, its stride is best described as a proud; stalking movement, each great clawed foot
striking the earth with a measured rhythm. When urged to speed, however, the high tharlarion bounds, in great leaping
movements that carry I twenty paces at a time. The tharlarion saddle, unlike the tarn saddle, is constructed to absorb shock. Primarily, this is done by constructing the
tree of the saddle in such a way that the leather seat is mounted on a hydraulic fitting which actually floats in a thick
lubricant. Not only does this lubricant absorb much of the shock involved, but it tends, except under abnormal stress,
to keep the seat of the saddle parallel to the ground. In spite of this invention, the mounted warriors always wear, as an
essential portion of their equipment, a thick leather belt, tightly buckled about their abdomen. In addition, the mounted
warriors inevitably wear a high, soft pair of boots called tharlarion boots. These protect their legs from the abrasive
hides of their mounts. When a tharlarion runs, its hide could tear the unprotected flesh from a man's bones. book 1, page 124 - 125
"The institution of Love War is an ancient one among the Turians and the Wagon Peoples...The games of the Love War are celebrated every spring..."
From Nomads of Gor, page 115
"Ar, beleagured and dauntless, was a magnificent sight. Its splendid, defiant shimmering cylinders loomed proudly behind the snowy marble ramparts, its double walls - the first three hundred feet high; the second, separated from the first by twenty yards, four hundred feet high - walls wide enough to
drive six tharlarion wagons abreast on their summits. Every fifty yards along the walls rose towers, jutting forth so as to expose any attempt at scaling to the fire from their numerous archer ports. Across the city, from the walls to the cylinders, I could occasionally see the slight flash of sunlight on the swaying tarn wires, literally hundreds of thousands of slender, almost invisible wires stretched in a
protective net across the city. Dropping the tarn through such a maze of wire would be an almost impossible task. The wings of a striking tarn would be cut from its body by such wires."
1:chap 15 "Beyond the walls were Pa-Kur's lines of investment, set forth with all the skill of Gor's most experienced siege engineers. Some hundreds of yards from the wall, just beyond crossbow
range, a gigantic ditch was being dug by thousands of siege slaves and prisoners. When completed, it would be fifty or sixty feet wide, and seventy or eighty feet deep. In back of the ditch slaves were piling up the earth which had been removed from the ditch, packing and hardening it into a
rampart. On the summit of the rampart, where it wascompleted, were numerous archer blinds, movable wooden screens to shield archers and light missile equipment."
1:chap 15
"Between the ditch and the walls of the city, under the cover of darkness, thousands of sharpened stakes had been set,inclined towards the walls. I knew that the worst of such devices would be invisible. Indeed, several of the spaces between the stakes were probably occupied by covered pits,
more sharpened stakes being fixed in the bottom. Also, half buried in the sands among the stakes and set in wooden blocks would be iron hooks, much like those used in ancient times on
Earth and sometimes called spurs. Behind the great ditch, separated from it by some two hundred yards, there was a smaller ditch, perhaps twenty feet wide and twenty feet deep,also with a rampart formed from the excavated earth. Surmounting this rampart was a palisade of logs, sharpened at
the tips. In the walls, every hundred yards or so, was a log
gate. "1:chap 15
"Here and there among the tents siege towers were being constructed. Nine towers were in evidence. It was unthinkable that they should top the walls of Ar, but with their battering rams they would attempt to break through at the lower levels. Tarnsmen would make the attack at the summit of the walls. When it came time for Pa-Kur to attack, bridges would be constructed over the ditches. Over these
bridges the siege towers would be rolled to the walls of Ar; over them his tharlarion cavalry would march; over them his horde would flow. Light engines, mostly catapults and ballistae, would be transported over the ditches by harnessed tarn teams."
1:chap15
"One aspect of the siege which I knew would exist but which I obviously could not witness would be the sensitive duel of mine and counter mine which must be taking place between the
camp of Pa-Kur and the city of Ar. There would be numerous tunnels being worked even now towards the walls of Ar, and, from Ar, counter-tunnels to meet them. Some of the most
hideous fighting in the siege would undoubtedly take place far under the earth in the cramped, foul, torchlit confines of those serpentine passageways, some of them hardly large
enough to permit a man to crawl. Many of the tunnels would be collapsed and others flooded. Given the depth of the foundations of Ar's mighty walls and the mantle of rock on
which they were fixed, it would be extremely unlikely that her walls could be successfully undermines to the extent of bringing down a significant section, but it was surely possible that if one of the tunnels managed to pass unnoticed beneath the ramparts, it could serve to spill a line of
soldiers into the city at night, enough men to overcome a gate crew and expose Ar to the onslaught of Pa-Kur's main forces."
1:chap15
"Sometimes the forces of Pa-Kur drove the warriors
of Ar back to the very walls of the city, forcing them
through the gates. Sometimes the forces of Ar would drive
the men of Pa-Kur back against the defensive stakes, and once
they drove them to take refuge across the now constructed
siege bridges spanning the great ditch."
1:chap15 "On the tenth day of the siege small engines, such as covered
catapults and ballistae, were flown across the ditches by
tarn teams and soon were engaged in artillery duels with the
engines mounted on the walls of Ar. Simultaneously, exposed
chains of siege slaves began to move the stake lines forward."
1:chap15or16 "Meanwhile,at several points in the city and at randomly
selected times, picked tarnsmen of Pa-Kur, each of whose
tarns carried a dangling, knotted rope of nine spearmen,
dropped to the wires and the tops of cylinders, landing their
small task forces of raiders. These task forces seldom
managed to return, but sometimes they were outstandingly"
1:
Warfare "Also, it might be noted that most Gorean warfare is carried out largely by relatively small groups of professional soldiers, seldom more than a few thousand in the field at a given time, trained men, who have their own caste.
Total warfare, with its arming of millions of men, and its broadcast slaughter of hundreds of populations, is Gorean neither in concept nor in practice.
Goreans, often castigated for their cruelty, would find such monstrosities unthinkable. Cruelty on Gor, though it exists, is usually purposeful, as in attempting to bring, through discipline and privation, a young man to manhood, or in teaching a female that she is a slave. "
Book 14: Fighting Slave of Gor, page 145
Gorean Military Technology "Towards the end of my training I always fought with shield
and helmet. I would have supposed that armour, or chain mail
perhaps, would have been a desirable addition to the
accoutrements of the Gorean warrior, but it had been
forbidden by the Priest-Kings. A possible hypothesis to
explain this is that the Priest-Kings may have wished war to
be a biologically selective process in which the weaker and
slower perish and fail to reproduce themselves. This might
account for the relatively primitive weapons allowed to the
Men Below the Mountains. On Gor it was not the case that a
cavern-chested toothpick could close a switch and devastate
an army. Also, the primitive weapons guaranteed that what
selection went on would proceed with sufficient slowness to
establish its direction, and alter it, if necessary."
1:49'ish
"...weapons technology is controlled to the point that the most common devices of war
are the scrossbow and lance. Further, there is no mechanized transportation or communication equipment, ordetection devices such as the radar and sonar so much in evidence in the military establishments of your world. "... it is the Flame Death merely to possess a weapon of the interdicted sort. Sometimes bold individuals create or acquire such war materials and sometimes for as long as a year escape the Flame Death, but sooner or later they are struck down."
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, pages 31-32
"Besides the spear and sword, the crossbow and longbow were permitted, and these latter weapons perhaps tended to redistribute the probabilities of survival somewhat more broadly then the former. It may be, of course, that the Priest-Kings controlled weapons as they did not simply because they feared for their own safety. I doubted that they stood against one another, man to man sword to sword, in their holy mountains, putting their principals of selection to the test of their own cause." Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 49
Free Women "For one thing she was not of the warriors and was thus not entitled to this badge of station; indeed, her wearing it, as she was a mere female, would be a joke to outsiders and an embarrassment to men; it would belittle its significance for them, making it shameful and meaningless. The insignia of men, like male garments, become empty mockeries when permitted to woman. This type of thing leads eventually both to demasculinization of men and the defeminization of females, a perversion of nature disapproved of generally, correctly or incorrectly, by Goreans. "
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, page 56.
Value Of Skill "Of what value, really, is it to be able to bring down a running man with the great bow at two hundred yards, to throw the quiva into a two-hort circle at twenty paces, to wield a sword with an agility others might bring to the handling of a knife? Of what use are such dreadful skills? Then I reminded myself that such skills are often of great use and that culture, with its glories of art, and music and literature, can flourish only within the perimeters of their employments. Perhaps there is then a role for the lonely fellows on the wall, for the border guards, for the garrisons of far-flung outposts, for the guardsmen in the city treading their lonely rounds. All these, too, in their humble, unnoticed way, serve. Without them the glory is not possible. Without them even their critics could not exist."
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, page 131
SOUL "Tears are not unbecoming to the soldier,' said Callimachus. `The soldier is a man of deep passions, and emotion. Many men cannot even understand his depths. Do not fear your currents and your powers. In the soldier are flowers and storms. Each is a part of him, and each is real. Accept both. Deny neither.'" Book 16: Guardsman of Gor, page 238 "I had been so much a fool as to be sad. That is not the mood in which to enter battle, even the battle which one knows one cannot win, even the ultimate battle in which oneknows one is doomed to defeat. Do not be sad. Better to take the field with laughter, with a joke, with a light heart, with a buoyant heart, or to go forward with sterness, or in fury, or with hatred, or defiance, or calculation, but never with self pity, never with sadness. Never such things, never them! The warrior does not kill himself or aid others in the doing of it. It is not in the codes." Book 24: Vagabonds of Gor, page 446 "I am English. And I recalled another vic- tory, in another time, on a distant world. I supposed that in time to come men might, on this holiday, show their wounds to slaves and wondering children, saying to them, "These I had in SeKara." Would this battle be sung as had that one? Not in England, I knew. But on Gor, it would. And yet songs 'I told myself, are lies. And those that had died this day did not sing. And yet, I asked myself, had they lived, would they not have sung? And I told myself, I thought yes. And so, then, I asked Myself, might we not then sing for them, and for ourselves as well, and could there not be, in some way that was hard to understand, but good, truth in songs? " 6:281 ""What is death?" I asked him.
He looked at me. "It is nothing," he said. "If death is nothing," I said, "then the little that life is must be much indeed." He looked away. "You are a Warrior," he said. "You have your wars, your battles."
5:chap23
Custom "The Supreme Initiate, as he called himself, raised a shield and then set it at his feet. He then raised a spear and set it, like the shield, at his feet. This gesture is a military convention employed by commanders on Gor when calling for a parley or conference. It signifies a truce, literally the temporary putting aside of weapons. In surrender, on the other hand, the shield straps and the shaft of the spear are broken, indicating that the vanquished has disarmed himself and places himself at the mercy of the conqueror." Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 187
"Whereas the military camp is usually laid
out in a set of concentric squares, reflecting the fourfold
principle of military organisation customary on Gor, the
merchant camp is laid out in concentric circles, the guards'
tents occupying the outermost ring, the craftsmen's, strap-
masters', attendants and slaves' quarters occupying inner
rings, and the centre being reserved for the merchant, his
goods, and his body-guard."
Book 1: after 190
"Still I would not speak, not while he controlled
a weapon; unfortunately, the first thing a Gorean warrior is
likely to do to the stranger in his tent is kill him, the
second is to find out who he is. "
1:chap15
Strategy
"At first even the countryside was depressing, for the men of Ar, as a
military policy, had devasted and area of some two or three
hundred pasangs on their borders, cutting down fruit trees,
filling wells, and salting the fertile areas. Ar had, for
most practical purposes, surrounded itself with an invisible
wall, a bleached region, forbidding and almost impassable to
those on foot."
1:190?
"I now stood and faced some six Taurentians, who stood in the defensive picket formation, three men forward in this case, and, in the interstices, three men back. This permits the men in reserve to move into the forward line to form a solid line, or, if the first line withdraws, to have space to take its place. It allows a great deal of mobility and, on the level of squad tactics, has its affinity to the Torian Squares; the space allows the swordsmen, of course, room in which to handle their weapons, room in which to properly attack or defend themselves; in this case I expected the center man to engage me, defending himself on the whole, while the flanking men would strike; should one of these three fall, of course, his place would be taken by one of the men in the reserve line."
5:342'ish
"The Gorean phalanx, like its predecessors of Earth, consisted of lines of massed spearmen, carrying spears -343- of different lengths, forming a wall of points; it attacked on the run, preferably on a downgrade, a military avalanche, on its own terrain and under optimum conditions, invincible; the Torian Squares had bested the phalanx by choosing ground for battle in which such a formation would break itself in its advance. The invention and perfecting of the Torian Squares and the consequent attempts to refine and improve the phalanx, failures, were developments which had preceded the use of tharlarion and tarn cavalries, which radically changed the face of Gorean warfare. Yet, in the day of the tharlarion and tarn, one still finds, among infantries, the Torian Square; the phalanx, though its impact could be exceeded only by the tharlarion wedge or line, is now unknown, except for a defensive relic known as the Wall, in which massed infantry remains stationary, heroically bracing itself, when flight is impossible, for the devastating charge of tharlarion."
5:343
It was true that the long bow is a weapon of peasants, who make and use them, sometimes with great efficiency. That face, in inself, that the long is a peasant weapon, would make many Goreans, particularly those ont familiar with the bow, look down upon it. Gorean warriors, generally drawn from the cities, are warriors by blood, by caste; moreover, they are High Caste; the peasants, isolate in their narrow fields and villages, are Low Caste; indeed, the Peasant is regarded, by those of the cities, as being little more than an ignoble brute, ingnorant and superstitious, venal and vicious, a grubber in the dirt, a plodding animal, an ill-tempered beast, something at best cunning and treacherous; and yet I knew that in each dirt-floored cone of straw that served as the dwelling place of a peasant and his family, there was, by the fire hole, a Home Stone; the peasants themselves, though regarded as the lowest caste on all Gor by most Goreans, call themselves proudly the ox on which the Home Stone rests, and I think their saying is true.
Peasants, incidentally, are seldom, except in emergencies, utilized in the armed forces of a city; this is a futher reason why their weapon, the long bow, is less known in the cities, and among warriors, than it deserves to be.
6:2
The Gorean, to my mind, is often, though not always, (bound by historical accidents and cultrual traditions, which are then often rationalized into a semblance of plausibility. For example, I had even heard arguments ot the effect that pleasants used the long bow only because they lacked the manufacturing capablity to produce crossbows, as though they could not have traded their goods or sold animals ot obtain crossbows, if they wished. Further, the heavy, bronze-headed spear and the short, double-edged steel sword are traditionally regarded as the worthy, and prime, weapons of the Gorean fighting man, he at least who is a true fighting man; and similarly traditionally, archers, who slay from a distance, not coming to grips with their enemy, with their almost invisible, swiftly moving shafts of wook, those mere splinters, are regarded as being rather contemptible, almost on the periphery of warriorhood; villains in Gorean epics, incidentally, when not of small and despised castes, are likely to be archers; I had heard warriors say that they would rather be poisoned by a woman than slain by an arrow.
6:2-3
Suddenly in the darkness before me there reared up a warrior of Port Kar. He struck down at me with the double-edged sword. Had he known I was a warrior he might not have used his blade improperly. I caught his wrist, breaking it. He howled in pain. I seized up his sword. Another man thrust at me with a spear. I took it in my left hand and jerked him forward, at the same time moving my blade in a swift, easy arc, transversely and slightly upward, towards him. It passed through his throat, returning me to the on-guard position. He fell to the matting, his helmet rolling, lost in his own blood. It is an elementary stroke, one if the first taught a warrior.
6:54 Tersites had been permitted that once to address the council because he, though thought mad, had once been a skilled shipwright. Indeed, the galleys of Port Kar, medium and heavy class, carried shearing blades, which had been an invention of Tersites. These are huge quarter-moons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, anchored into the frame of the ship itself. One of the most common of (-page 136-) naval strategies, other than ramming, is oar shearing, in which one vessel, her oars suddenly shortened inboard, slides along the hull of another, whose oars are still outboard, splintering and breaking them off. The injured gally then is like a broken-winged bird, and at the mercy of the other ship’s ram as she comes about, flutes playing and drums beating, and makes her strike amidships. Recent galleys of Cos and Tyros, and other maritime powers, it had been noted, were now also, most ofte, equipped with shearing blades. 6:136
The fighting ship, incidentally, the long ship, the ram-ship, has never been, to my knowledge, in Port Kar, or Cos, or Tyros, or elsewhere on Gor, rowed by slaves; the Gorean fighting ship always has free men at the oars.
6:140
At the far edge of the piazza, in one of the bordering canals, nosing forward to take a berth between two tiled piers, we saw a ram-ship, medium class. Her mast, with its long yard, was lashed to the deck. Doubtless her sail was stored below. These are the arrangements when a galley moves through the city, or when she enters battle.
6:146
There was some polite striking of the left shoulder with the right hand in the room, which is a common Gorean applause, though not of the warriors, who clash weapons.
6:177
The eyes of the ship, painted on either side of the bow, would now have turned toward the opening of the harbor of Telnus. Ships of Gor, of whatever class or type, always have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the prow, as in tarn ships, or, as in the Rena, as in round ships, on either side of the bow. It is the last thing that is done for the ship before it is first launched. The painting of the eyes reflects the Gorean seaman’s belief that the ship is a living thing. She is accordingly given eyes, that she may see her way.
6:183
TARNS:
The Goreans believe, incredibly enough, that the capacity to master a tarn in innate and that some men possess this characteristic and that some do not. One does not learn to master a tarn. It is a matter of blood and spirit, of beast and man, of a relation between two beings which must be
immediate, intuitive, spontaneous. It is said that a tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and that those who are not die in this first meeting. My first impression was that of a rush of wind and a great snapping sound, as if a giant might be snapping an enormous towel or scarf; then I was cowering, awestricken, in a great winged shadow, and an immense tarn, his talons extended like gigantic steel hooks, his wings sputtering fiercely in the air, hung above me, motionless except for the beating of his wings.
"Stand clear of the wings," shouted the Older Tarl.
I needed no urging. I darted out from under the bird. One stroke of those wings would hurl me
yards from the top of the cylinder. The tarn dropped to the roof of the cylinder and regarded us with his bright black eyes. Though the tarn, like most birds, is suprisingly light for its size, this primarily having to do with the comparative hollowness of the bones, it is an extremely powerful bird, powerful even beyond what one would expect from such a monster. Whereas large Earth birds, such as the eagle, must, when taking flight from the ground, begin with a running start, the tarn, with its incredible musculature, aided undoubtedly by the somewhat lighter gravity of Gor, can with a spring and a sudden flurry of its giant wings lift both himself and his rider into the air. In Gorean, these birds are sometimes spoken of as Brothers of the Wind.
The plumage of tarns is various, and they are bred for their colors as well as their strength and
intelligence. Black tarns are used for night raids, white tarns in winter campaigns, and multicolored, resplendent tarns are bred for warriors who wish to ride proudly, regardless of the lack of camouflage. The most common tarn, however, is greenish brown. Disregarding the disproportion in size, the Earth bird which the tarn most closely resembles is the hawk, with the exception that it has a crest somewhat in the nature of a jay's.
Tarns, who are vicious things, are seldom more than half tamed, and like their diminutive earthly counterparts, the hawks, are carnivorous. It is not unknown for a tarn to attack and devour his own rider. They fear nothing but the tarn-goad. They are trained by men of the Caste of Tarn Keepers to respond to it while still young, when they can be fastened by wires to the training perches. Whenever a young bird soars away or refuses obedience in some fashion, he is dragged back to the perch and beaten with the tarn-goad. Rings, comparable to those which are fastened on the legs of the young birds, are worn by the adult birds to reinforce the memory of the gobbling wire and the tarn-goad. Later of course, the adult birds are not fastened, but the conditioning given them in thier youth usually holds, except when they become abnormally disturbed or have not been able to obtain food. The tarn is one of the two most common mounts of a Gorean warrior; the other is the high tharlarion, a species of saddle-lizard, used mostly by clans who have never mastered tarns. No one in the City of Cylinders, as far as I knew, maintained tharlarions, though they were supposedly quite common on Gor, particularly in the lower areas - in swampland and on the deserts Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 51.
War Ships of Gor "It must be understood that the ship itself is the weapon."
6:192 ram-ship (noun): war galley, having up to 3 banks of oars as well as masts and sails; named for the battering rams on the prow tarn ship (noun): a type of ram-ship, being long and narrow, with a shallow draft, a straight keel, a single lateen-rigged mast, and a single bank of oars; at the prow, below the waterline, is a ram shaped like a tarn's head; it also carries light catapults, shearing blades, and other weaponry Gorean Ships.
Medium class Ram-Ships Ram-ships, also known as a long-ships, of medium class have a keel
length of 80-100 Gorean Feet, with a beam of 10 to 15 feet. Single
Masted however is predominately an oared vessel and is the Gorean
war ship. Eyes are painted on the prow as the sailor considered his
vessel a living thing. Tur-wood is used for the galley frames, beams,
clamps, posts and hull planking. The wood of the Ka-la-na tree serves
for the capstans and Mastheads. Masts, spars and deck planking are all
made of the needled trees..the evergreens. Rudders and Oars made of
temwood. The oarsmen are always freemen never slaves. It Gathers it
name from the "ram" she carries, usually Iron Clad and rides just
below the water line. In War, or when the galley enters the City, the
Mast taken down and sails stored below deck. They carry Catapults
capable of tossing loads of burning pitch at the other vessel. They also
carry spearmen with javelins, usually tarred and flaming and bowmen,
ready to send a barrage of flaming arrows over to the offending
vessel. Shearing blades are also always affixed forward on the vessel.
These are huge quarter moons of steel, anchored to the frame itself.
One of the most common naval strategies other than the ramming, is
to shear the oars, leaving the opposing vessel like a broken winged
bird. Medium class for a long ship, or ram-ship, in determined not by freight capacity but by keel length and width of beam; a medium-class long ship, or ram-ship, will have a keel length of from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet Gorean; and a width of beam of from ten to fifteeen feet Gorean.
6:127
The Dorna, a tarn ship, is not untypical of her class. Accordingly I shall, in brief, describe her. I mention, however, in passing, that a great variety of ram-ships ply Thassa, many of which, in their dimensions, their lines, their rigging and their rowing arrangements, differ from her considerably. The major difference, I would suppose, is that between the singly-banked and the most doubly- or trebly-banked vessel. The Dorna, like most other tarn ships, is single-banked; and yet her oar power is not inferior to even the trebly-banked vessels; how this is I shall soon note. The Dorna, like most tarn ships, is a long, narrow vessel of shallow draft. She is carvel-built, and her planking is fastened with nails of bronze and iron; in places, wooden pegs are also used; her planking, depending on placement, varies from two to six inches in thickness; also, to strengthen her against the shock of ramming, four-inch-thich wales run longitudinally about her sides. She carrieds a single, removable mast, with its long yard. It is lateen rigged. Her keep, one hundred and twenty-eight feet Gorean, and her beam, sixteen feet Gorean, mark her as heavy class. Her freeboard area, that between the water line and the deck, is five feet Gorean. She is long, low and swift. She has a rather straight keel, and this, with her shallow draft, even given her size, makes it possible to beach her at night, if one wishes. It is common among Gorean seamen to beach their craft in the evening, set watches, make camp, and launch again in the morning.
The Dorna’s ram, a heavy projection in the shape of a tarn’s beak, shod with iron, rides just below the water line. Behind the ram, to prevent it from going too deeply
(-page 192-) into an enemy ship, pinning the attacker, is, shaped like the spread crest of a tarn, the shield. The entire ship is built in such a way that the combined strength of teh keel, stempost and strut-frames centeres itself at the ram, or spur. The ship is, thus, itself the weapon.
The bow of the Dorna is concave, sloping down to meet the ram. Her stern describles what is almost a complete semicircle. She has two steering oars, or side rudders. The sternpost is high, and fanlike; it is carved to represent feathers; the actual tail feathers of a tarn, however, would be horizontal to the plane, not vertical; the prow of the tarn ship resembles the ram and shield, though it is made of painted wood; it is designed and painted to resemble the head of a tarn.
6:192 . There are in the building of ships, as in other things, values to be weighed. The ram-ship is not built for significant sail dependence or maximum seaworthiness. She is built for speed, and the capacity to destroy other shipping. She is not a rowboat but a racing shell; she is not a club, but a rapier.
6:206
Round-Ships "On the other hand, whereas the round ships do not carry rams and are much slower and less maneuverable than the long ships, they are not inconsequential in a naval battle, for their deck areas and deck castles can accommodate springals, small catapults, and chain-slings onagers, not to mention numerous bowmen, all of which can provide a most discouraging and vicious barrage, consisting normally of javelins, burning pitch, fiery rocks and crossbow quarrels. "
6:133
Round-ships, which are not round of course, have deep holds for
merchandise. They carry heavier, permanent rigging and supports
more sail, being generally two Masted. The round-ship of course is not
round but does have a much wider beam to its length, a one to six
ratio. They can freight between one hundred and one hundred and fifty
tons by earth measure or 6,000 to 7,500 stone Gorean below deck.
The Round-ship is a much slower vessel. Although the Round-ships do
not carry Rams they are not inconsequential in a naval battle. Their
deck area and deck castles can accommodate signals, small catapults
and chain sling onagers, not to mention several bowmen which can
provide a most discouraging barrage of arrows and javelins. Tur-wood
is used for the galley frames, beams, clamps, posts and hull planking.
The wood of the Ka-la-na tree serves for the capstans and Mastheads.
Masts, spars and deck planking are all made of the needled trees..the
evergreens. Rudders and Oars made of temwood. Although they carry
oarsmen, generally slaves they are more of a sailing vessel. They can
sail windward taking full advantage of their lateen rigging, which is
particularly suited to windward work. They have a lower keel to beam
ratio, making it very sea worthy and more difficult to break apart at
high seas. . Besides having large numbers of unchained, armed men in their rowing holds, these round ships, moreover, were, below decks, and in the turrets and the stem and stern castles, crowded with armed, able-bodied men, citizens of Port Kar who had swarmed aboard, that they might fight. There were crews on these ships armed with grappling irons and each of the ships carried two or more of the spiked planks. These are actually like gangplanks, some flve feet in width, to be fastened at one end to the round ship and intended to be dropped, with their heavy spiked ends, into the deck of an enemy ship. The round ship has a substantially higher freeboard area than the ram-ship, which is lower, and so the spiked plank is feasible. Commonly, of course, it is the round ship, with her normally small, free crews, which attempts to evade boarding.
6:262 The common strategy with a round ship is to shear and board, because, normally, one wishes not to sink the ship but take it as a prize
6:263
Raider Class A beautiful ship, sleek and well lined. It carries 40 oars double manned.
Oars are generally 9 feet in length and narrower so that they may cut
and sweep at great speed more rapidly than the wider bladed oar.
This, and the two men on each oar and the lightness of the vessel
made her a very swift ship. The keel to beam ratio is one to eight, also
designed for swiftness. It is eighty gorean feet long with some ten
Gorean wide. The rowers sat within the hull proper, facing aft. The
thole ports have covers on the inside and are on swivels which allows
them to be closed when the ship is using sail. The sail is squarish,
though somewhat wider at the bottom. Its Mast could also be lowered
and fitted into two blocks of wood, wedged in at the top block by
means of a hammer. The single sail hangs straight from a spar of
needle wood. It can be shortened or let out by reefing ropes. The
ability to shorten or let out the sail in a matter of moments is a highly
desirable trait. Some raiders have two or three Masts..with lateen
rigging to take them into the wind. The ship is like all others, clinker
built, being constructed of over lapping planks or strakes of the needle
tree again. The frame then fits within them. Between the strakes
tarred rope serves as caulking, with tar covering them as well. Outside
planks too are painted with tar to protect it from the sea and ship
worms. The ships tends to be painted with black and red in irregular
lines so that at night, with the Mast down, and among the shadows, it
is very difficult to detect. Being clinker built it allows the ship to literally
twist and bend in vicious seas, the hull planking can be bent more than
a Gorean foot without breaking. The decking of the ship is loose so
that it may be pulled aside for greater cargo space. She is fast, strong
and cargo capable making her an excellent ship for raiding. Delta Brigade
A rebel group which quietly fought Cosians with 'resistance' tactics during their occupation of Ar. Their trademark was a bloody 'delka' mark often slashed into the skin of their victims. The existence of this unorganized group began from a comment made in a tavern by Tarl Cabot. The rumor led others, independent of each other, to use similar tactics, which convinced the Cosians of a more concerted effort against them.
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, pages 176-189
Laager
Also known as wagon fort, it is a defensive wagon formation utilized by wagon peoples. Wagons are arranged in a circle, end to end, tongues inward, and chained together, the front axle of one wagon chained to the rear axle of the next. The encampment, the draft animals, and any accompanying livestock are protected within.
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, page 43
Book 23: Renegades of Gor, page 7
Last Spear
The last hunter in a band of hunters in the Voltai Ranges to throw his spear. This spearman is the weakest of the party and will, if all spears have not killed the prey and it attacks, be the one sacrificed to allow his fellows to escape.
Book 3: Priest Kings of Gor, page 20 Loot pit
A holding place for captured free women awaiting collars and branding during the military occupation of a city.
Book 25: Magicians of Gor, page 190 Margin of Desolation
An area north of Ar that was made into a wilderness thousands of pasangs deep. Wells were poisoned, and fields burned and salted to prevent the approach of armies from the north. It was allowed to re-vegetate and re-populate. Some believe the reason is to bring more arable land under cultivation; others say that the eyes of Ar turned north toward the powerful Salerian Confederation.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 129
Book 7: Captive of Gor, page 255
Book 11: Slave Girl of Gor, page 145 Shield, signal
The men of Torvaldsland use different colored shields as a means of communication. Two that are universal are the red shield which means, 'war', and the white shield meaning, 'peace'.
Book 9: Marauders of Gor, pages 70 and 181 Tarn drums
Drums used in a march during war; the signals are used to control flying tarn armies.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, pages 130 and 191
Tarn wire
Razor wire strung between the walls of a city to protect it from aerial attack.
Book 1: Tarnsman of Gor, page 162 Tarnburg
A city in the southern, more civilized, ranges of the Voltai, it is essentially a mountain fortress located two hundred pasangs to the north and east of Hochburg. This high city is the home of Dietrich of Tarnburg, a renowned military strategist, the victor in multiple engagements, and the innovator of several military techniques, defenses, formations, etc.
Book 21: Mercenaries of Gor, pages 31-33 Runner Class A lighter version of the Tarn-ship, a long narrow vessel of shallow
draft. The ship is carvel-built, planking held in place with nails of bronze
and iron. The planks are 2-6 horts in thickness to strengthen her from
ramming. She has a single removable Mast, with a long yard. It has
lateen rigging and the ship is built long low and for swiftness. The ram
is below the water surface, shod with iron and can fold back. The
entire ship is built in such a way that the combined strength of her
keel, stempost, and strut frames center on the ram or spur. Thus, the
ship itself is the weapon. It has shearing blades, quarter moons of
steel, affixed to the hull to shear off oars of the offending vessel. The
Runner is lightly weaponed with movable turrets midship. It carries two
catapults, two sling onagers and eight springals. Its oars are 27 to 30
feet gorean and weight about 1 stone a foot. The oarsmen are in
groups of three men to a bench. This being the smaller of the tarn
ships it is most often used for scouting. Information given by Kar Vonnar
We swung to port. Our ram, now, threatened the Voskjard's ship. The archers scattered behind
the bulwarks. Consternation held sudden sway upon her decks. Oars, like startled limbs, not in
unison, unevenly, rose from the water. We saw rudder activity, not synchronized between the
port and starboard rudders. Oars, one and two, and more, at a time, began to slash down at the
water. She, too, swung to port. Then she had slipped away behind the shattered bow of the Leda.
We had not charge her. Off the starboard bow lay a galley of the Voskjard, rocking on the water,
seemingly somnolent, but we knew, in an instant, if we exposed our flank to her, she would come
alive, springing to the attack.
"Beware the sleen that seems to sleep," is a Gorean proverb. pg 50 Guardsman of GOR
Tarn Stuff "Tarnsmen, riders of the great tarns, called Brothers of the Wind, are masters of the open sky, fierce warriors whose battleground is the clouds and sky; they are not forest people; they do not care to stalk and hunt where, from the darkness of trees, from a canopy of foliage, they may meet suddenly, unexpectedly, a quarrel from the crossbow of an invisible assailant.
7:63'ish "The element of the tarnsman is not the green glades, and the branches; it is the clouds, the saddle and the sky; his steed is the tarn, his field of battle, strewn with light and wind, higher than mountains, deeper than the sea, is the very sky itself. Such men do not care to venture creeping into the shadows of forests, pursuing scattered game. Victorious, they roar with laughter and, hauling on the onestraps of their tarn harness, take flight. "
7:190'ish "The small bow, interestingly, has never been used among tarnsmen; perhaps this is because the kaiila is almost unknown above the equator, and the lesson of kaiilaback fighting has not been much available to them; perhaps it is because of tradition, which weighs heavily in Gorean life, and even in military affairs for example, the phalanx was abandoned only after more than a century of attempts to ----------***---------- preserve and improve it; or perhaps the reason is that range is commonly more important to tarnsmen in flight than maneuverability of the bow. I suspect, however, that the truest reason is that tarnsmen, ,never having learned respect for the small bow, tend to despise such a weapon, regarding it as unworthy a Warrior's hand, as being too puny and ineffective to win the approval of a true Gorean fighting man. "
5:343 (after) "The tarnsman commonly carries, strapped to the saddle, a Gorean spear, a fearsome weapon, but primarily a missile weapon, and one more adopted to infantry. The tarnsmen, of course, centuries before, had been developed from land forces; it had always seemed to me that the tarn cavalries of Gor might be considerably improved by a judicious alteration of weapons and training practices; however, I had never had a command of tarnsmen of my own, and my ideas were of little interest, even to the tarnsmen of Ko-ro-ba, my city."
5:343{after)
Something of the same joy of the rider, and mystique of the rider, exists on Gor in connection
with the tarn as it existed on Earth in connection with the horse. For example, if you have thrilled
to the movements and the power of a fine steed, you have some conception of what it is to be
aflight on tarnback. There is the wind, the sense of the beast, the speed, the movements, now in
all dimensions, the climb, the dive, soaring, turning, all in the freedom of the sky! There is here,
too, a oneness of man and beast. pg 138 Renegades Of GOR I had been so much a fool as to be sad. That is not the mood in which to enter battle, even the battle which one knows one cannot win, even the ultimate battle in which knows one is doomed to defeat. Do not be sad. Better to take the field with laughter, with a joke, with a light heart, with a buoyant heart, or to go forward with sternness, or in fury, or with hatred, or defiance, or calculation, but never with self pity, never with sadness. Never such things, never them! The warrior does not kill himself or aid others in the doing of it. It is not in the codes. pg 446 Vagabonds of GOR Tarnsmen:
A special type of warrior is the tarnsman. Tarnsmen ride the mighty tarns, giant
birds, also called the Brothers of the Wind. A tarn resembles a hawk but with a crest
like a jay. It is surprisingly light for its size due to the hollowness of its bones. It is an
extremely powerful bird that can fly from the ground with a spring and sudden wing
flurry. It is a diurnal creature. It is carnivorous and commonly eat only what they
catch themselves, usually antelopes and wild bull. If enough food is available, they will
eat half their weight. But, near the end of the Gorean series, tarns begin being trained
to eat prepared meat. A tarn is seldom more than half-tamed, and it is not unknown
for a tarn to attack its own rider. Tarns fear nothing but the tarn goad. The plumage varies and many are bred for their color. The most common color is greenish-brown. Black tarns are used for night raids and white ones for winter raids. Multi-colored tarns are used by proud warriors who do not care for camouflage. War tarns have their talons shod in steel. There are also draft tarns, used for transporting cargo. There are also saddle tarns, used as transport. There is even a jungle tarn, a rare creature, that is gloriously plumaged and comes from the tropical reaches of the
Cartius. The capacity to master a tarn is thought to be innate. It cannot be learned. Warriors
who wish to become tarnsmen are taken to meet a tarn. The warrior must be
accepted by the tarn or he will be eaten by the mighty bird. A tarn must be controlled
by a strong master, and if the master ever gets weak or helpless, the tarn may kill
him. Tarnsmen have a few tools to use to control tarns. The tarn goad is a metal rod, about two feet long, with a leather loop attached. It has a switch on the handle for on and off, and emits an electric shock in a sparkled of yellow sparks. It will hurt your flesh but won't mark it if you are hit by one. A tarn goad may also be used to direct the tarn. One hits the bird in the direction opposite to the one you wish to go. But this is imprecise and there is a danger in using the goad
too much as it will become less effective. A tarn whistle, also called a tarn call, is used
to call specific tarns. It has one note and summons only one tarn. Tarns are commonly guided by a throat strap, to which are attached six leather streamers, or reins. They are fixed in a metal ring on the forward portion of the saddle. The reins are of different colors but you learn them by ring position and not color. Each rein attaches to a small ring on the throat strap and the rings are evenly spaced. One draws on the rein which is attached to the ring which most closely
resembles the direction you wish to go. To land or lose attitude, use the four strap
which exerts pressure on a ring beneath the tarn's throat. To rise in flight or gain
altitude, use the one strap which is on the back of the tarn's neck. The throat strap
rings are numbered clockwise. Letting the reins hang on the saddle ring, with no
pressure on the throat strap, is the signal for a constant and straight flight. Tarns have a five-rung leather mounting ladder, on the left side, which folds up at
the side of the saddle. You strap yourself into the saddle with a strap, a saddle belt.
Tarn saddles are wide enough to accommodate a bound female slave across it. Tarn
saddles are rather large with saddle packs, weapon sheaths and paired slave rings.
Tarn baskets may have guidance attachments to control the tarn from the basket,
similar to the normal guidance from a saddle. There are many sizes and varieties of
baskets. The most common basket is flat-bottomed, square-sided, and about four
feet deep. One of a young tarnsman's first mission is commonly to capture a slave from
another city for his personal quarters. There are a few ways to capture a girl from
your tarn. A tarn may grab the girl in its talons and then land. The warrior will
dismount, get the girl from its talons, bind her and then fasten her to a saddle ring. A
tarnsman may fly low and hit a girl with a wing so that she is sent sprawling. The
warrior then dismounts and captures her. Another tarnsman might hit a girl with the
butt of a spear. Others fly low and rope a girl, using the braided leather ropes familiar
to all tarnsmen. A raiding tarnsman usually carry his weapons, rations, a compass, maps, binding fiber and extra bowstrings. They commonly use spears and crossbows from tarnback. A
tarns can even carry a knotted rope of seven to ten men without difficulty. This is
helpful in attacks on a city. There are some excellent quotes about tarnsmen as well. "The spirit of the tarn must not be broken, not that of the war tarn. He is
trained to the point where it is necessary for a strong master to decide
whether he shall serve him or slay him. You will come to know your tarn, and
he will come to know you. You will be as one in the sky, the tarn the body,
you the mind and will. You will live in an armed truce with the tarn. If you
become weak or helpless, he will kill you. As long as you remain strong, his
master, he will serve you, respect you, obey you." "Once one has been a tarnsman, one must return again and again to the
birds."
SHIPS AND SAILORS (#36, Version 4.0)
Thassa: Thassa is the Gorean name for the vast ocean to the west of the known
world of Gor. Thassa simply means "the sea." Thassa extends westward an unknown
distance. The part of Thassa a hundred pasangs or so west of the isalnds of Cos and
Tyros is known as the World's End. It is a legendary place as no one has ever sailed
there and returned. Some believe that Thassa is endless while others say the end of
the world is sheer and a ship will plunge over the edge. In the maelstroms southwest
of Tyros, shattered ship planking is sometimes found. Like any ocean, Thassa can be
calm in places and at different times, but it can also be very fierce. Numerous ships ply
the waters of Thassa and also the rivers and waterways of the land. Ships: The word "ship" is the same in Gorean as it is in English. There are two basic
types of ship on Gor, round ships and tarn ships. Both types are commonly double
ruddered and shallow drafted vessels. Most sailing, except by round ships, is done in
the spring and summer. In Se'Kara, especially later in the month, there are often high
seas on Thassa. It is also a common custom for ships to remain within sight or in
clear relation to the shore. It is also common to beach crafts at night and launch again
in the morning. In the open sea, ships keep one another, where possible, on their port
sides, thus passing to starboard. Signal flags, pennons and squares, in mixed colors
and designs, are flown on the stem-castle and stern-castle lines. They are used for
communication between ships while at sea. Round ships: A round ship, also known as a merchant ship, has a deep hold for merchandise. It is an oared vessel with a heavy, permanent rigging. It is generally two-masted and the masts are not removable. It also has more sail than a war ship.
The main mast is a bit forward of amidships and the foremast is some four or five
yards abaft of the ship's yoke. Both are lateen sails and the yard of the foresail is
about half the length of the yard of the mainsail. The rowing areas is closed to the air
and commonly carries from one to two hundred or more slaves in the rowing hold.
Slaves commonly row in round ships though some cities have begun to experiment
with using free men. A round ship is not actually round but has a much wider ratio of
its beam to its length of keel, about one to six. A war ship will have a one to eight
ratio. Round ships are slower and less maneuverable than war ships but can still be
used in a naval battle. They do not carry rams but their decks can hold numerous
other ship weapons like springals and catapults. Round ships differ among themselves
considerably. They can be broken down into three basic categories: light galley,
medium class, and heavy class. A medium class ship can freight about 100 to 150
tons below its decks. A merchant ships is commonly identified with their name at
three points on the ship, starboard bow, port bow, and stern. Tarn ships: Tarns ships are also known as long ships, ram-ships, or war ships. There is a great variety of ram-ships varying in their dimensions, lines, rigging and rowing arrangements. Usually, war ships have a removable mast with its long yard. It most commonly sails only with a fair wind. The principal weapons of the ramship are the ram and shearing blades. The ram in usually in the shape of a tarn's beak, shod with iron. It rides just above the waterline. The freeboard area, between the water line and
deck, is five Gorean feet. Behind the ram is the spread crest of a tarn, a shield to
prevent the ram from going too deeply into another ship. Most ships have a concave
bow to facilitate the placing of the ram mount and ram. A ship is built so the combined
strength of the keel, stempost and strut-frames centers at the ram. Shearing blades
are huge quartermoons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, and anchored into the
frame of the ship. The ship slides along another ship and shears off their oars. Most
maritime powers use shearing blades. Its deck width is twenty-one Gorean feet. The
rowing deck is open to the air. The oars are set in groups of three and three men sit a
single bench. The benches slant obliquely back toward the stern castle. The three oars
are usually of varying lengths, the most inboard being the longest. The oars weigh
about one stone a foot and their length varies from 27 to 30 Gorean feet. Unlike the
round ships, a war ship is never rowed by slaves. Tarn ships come in many different
varieties and may also be divided into light, medium and heavy class. Medium class is
determined not by freight capacity but by keel length and width of beam. A medium
class war ship will have a keel length of eighty to one hundred and twenty Gorean feet
and a beam width of ten to fifteen Gorean feet. A heavy class would have a keel of
128 Gorean feet and a beam of sixteen Gorean feet. Lower Hold: Beneath the first hold of a ship is the lower hold. This is a tiny crawl space, about eighteen inches, between the deck of the first hold and the curved hull of the ship. It is divided by its keel. It is unlit, cold and damp. It commonly contains sand for ballast and the sump, or bilge. The foul and briny water accumulates there and the bilge is pumped once a day in calm weather, more often in bad weather. It may be
used for the storage of perishables or to keep items cool. It may also be used to
punish slaves. A slave, placed into the lower hold with its darkness and the urts that
live there, will quickly learn to be obedient. Sails: Ships carry different sails for different conditions. The yard itself, from the mast, must be lowered and hoisted so the sails can be removed or attached. There is no practical way to take in, or shorten, a sail as in square rigged craft. But, lateen sails permit sailing closer to the wind, great maneuverability and great efficiency in tacking. The triangular lateen sail, on its single sloping yard, is also beautiful and that means a
lot to Goreans. There are three main types of sails and all lateen. They differ mainly by
their size. The largest is the "fair weather" sail which is used with light winds. A smaller
sail is the "tarn" sail used with strong winds astern. It takes its name from the tarn
ships where they are commonly found. It is also called a "storm" sail as it is an escape
sail to flee heavy storms. There is also a "tharlarion" sail, a smaller version of the tarn
sail. It is more manageable and used most often in swift, brutal, shifting winds.
Eyes on ships: All ships have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the
prow as in tarn ships or on either side of the bow. It is the last thing done to a ship
before it is first launched. It is done by the shipwright. The eyes reflect the belief that
the ship is a living thing and needs to see its way. Sea Men: A Keleustes is the man who marks time for the rowers. He strikes a great copper drum with a leather cushioned mallet to call time. He may also use a pounding block instead of the drum. He can mark a variety of different types of time, depending on how fast the ship needs to go. He is also known as the hortator. He reports
directly to the oar-master. The oar-master reports to the captain.
Only free men row war ships. Slaves may row on merchant ships. Gorean seamen
recognize ships with the same ease they recognize faces.
Pirates are a threat on Thassa and the rivers of Gor. Green is the color of pirates
because in the bright sun, reflecting off the sea, green ships are nearly invisible. They
make their entire ships green including the hulls, sails, oars and ropes.
The exact expressions port and starboard do not exist in Gorean though there are
equivalent expressions. Sailors of Cos refer to the left side of the ship by its port of
destination and the right side by port of registration. This changes when both ports
are the same and then the left side is the "harbor side."
There is a common ritual done before a ship leaves port. They say "Ta-Sardar-Gor
and then "Ta-Thassa" and finally pour wine, oil and salt into the sea. This is to wish the
ship luck on its journey. Tersites: Tersites is a half-blind shipwright, considered to be mad by most Goreans. He has been long scorned on Gor though he may be a genius. His radical ideas on ship design have been sometimes accepted and sometimes ignored. He created shearing
blades which are used by many different navies. He also created a new ship design,
one extremely different from conventional Gorean ship design theory. The ship is
deep-keeled and square rigged as most ships are not. It carries a foremast though it
was a ramship. It also possessed great oars that requires multiple men to handle
rather than a single man per oar. It carries a single oar slung at the vessel's sternpost
and not the normal double rudders. Its ram is carried high out of the water. This ship
was intended to sail beyond the World's End. Samos of Port Kar believes Tersites to
be a genius and commissioned him to construct that ship. Before the ship can be
completed though, Tersites burns the ship, destroying all of the ship's plans as well.
He then vanishes afterwards. No one knows why he did what he did. That mystery is
never resolved in the books. Women on Ships: The presence of free women on a ship makes some sailors uneasy and they are usually regarded as bad luck. Free women though do travel on merchant ships. Female sailors do not exist on Gor. Slave girls on a ship though are welcomed.
Many ships even have a Luck Girl, a special slave who acts as mascot and is regarded
as good luck. Most slaves on a ship available to the crew for their pleasure. This
helpos make a long journey pass much more pleasant. Slaves may be kept above or below the decks. On the deck, girls are kept in small deck cages that are fastened on the deck. At night and in rough weather, they may be covered with a tarpaulin. The girls kept below the decks are in slave platforms that essentially have a wooden top and bottom and all four sides covered by mesh. Each
space is about twenty-five inches wide, eighteen inches high, and six feet inches long.
Urts are a problem below decks so the mesh is meant to keep them away from the
girls. Being kept above decks is the preferred place for slaves. Ship Warfare: Tarn ships are the primary war ships on Thassa. Merchant ships try to avoid war if at all possible. They will normally try to be accompanied by tarn ships if they feel the situation will be dangerous. The primary weapon of the tarn ships is their ram. Their secondary weapon is their shearing blades. The medium and heavy class ships carry the shearing blades. They are huge quartermoons of steel, seven feet high and five inches wide. Ships then have a variety of items that serve as tertiary
weapons. When entering battle, war ships take their masts down and store their sails below
decks. The bulwarks and decks of the ship are often covered with wet hides to
prevent fires from starting or spreading. War trumpets and message flags are used to
send signals between ships. Various weapons are placed upon the deck such as
springals, catapults, and cahin-sling onagri. Springals fire javelins. Catapults fire a
variety of items such as clay globes filled with burning pitch or flaming oils. Bowmen
are also common. They protect themselves behind wicker shields and may fire torch
arrows. The ship bow is a short bow, stout and maneuverable. Its rate of fire is
superior to the crossbow and it is easy to use in the tight quarters of a ship. Other Water Craft: There are a wide variety of other water craft used on the rivers,
lakes, marshes and canals of Gor. Barges, coracles, skiffs, river galleys, punts and
more exist. Barges are often used on rivers and are simply constructed of layered
timbers of wood. They are commonly towed by teams of river tharlarion. Marsh
barges are different from normal barges. They are narrow ships with high, curved
prows. They are anchored at both stem and stern. The anchor hooks are curved and
three-pronged, lighter than would be in other ships. They are oared vessels, rowed by
slaves. They do not use a keleustes. Instead, the oar-master verbally counts for the
rowers. Marsh barges are used mostly by those of Port Kar. Coracles are like leather
tubs propelled by the thrusting of a pole. They are used by the poor in the canals of
Port Kar. The rencers of the Vosk delta often use rush craft. They are formed of
pliant, tubular, lengthy Vosk rushes and bound with marsh vine. They have a slightly
curved stern and prow. They are small, light and narrow, barely large enough for one
man. They are rowed by a triangular bladed tem-wood paddle. A punt is a small,
square-ended, flat-bottomed boat. It is poled and commonly kept on larger vessels
for small chores. Ports: Most Gorean ports and islands are not managed by the Merchant's Caste but by magistrates appointed by the city council. Exchange islands, also known as free
islands, in Thassa are administered as free ports by members of the Merchant's
Caste. Such islands include Teletus, Tabor, Farnacium, Hulneth, Asperiche, Anango,
Ianda, Hunjer, Scagnar, and Skjern. Torvaldsland ships: The ships of Torvaldsland are different from most of the other Gorean ships that exist. Their ships are smaller craft, clinker built, with overlapping, bending planking. They are also known as serpent ships. They are more seaworthy
than other Gorean ships. They must be baled frequently and are not well suited for
cargo. They are better raiding vessels. Their sails are square and cannot sail as close
to the wind as lateen sails. But, the square sail makes it possible to do with a single
sail. You can take in and let out the canvas as needed. The ships have a prow on each
end, making it easier to beach them. The steering oar, on the starboard side, is most
effective in the normal "forward" direction. It is very hard to ram their ships because
of their small size and ability to rapidly reverse direction. Torvaldsland ships are fast.
With a fair wind, they can cover 200 to 250 pasangs in a day. On some light raiding
galleys, the tarnhead at the prow is hinged. This helps to remove the weight from the
prow's height and gives greater stability in high seas. It is always at the prow in harbor
or when the ship enters an inlet or river so it can make its strike. A white shield hung
on the mast is a sign of truce. This galley, one of my swiftest, the Tesephone of Port Kar, had forty oars, twenty to a side. She was single ruddered, the rudder hung on the starboard side. Like others of her class, she is of quite shallow draft. Her first hold is scarcely a yard in height. Such ships are not meant for cargo, lest it be treasure or choice slaves. They are commonly used for patrols, and swift communication. The oarsmen, as in most Gorean war galleys, are free men. Slaves serve commonly only in cargo galleys. The oarsmen sit their thwarts on the first deck, exposed to the weather. Most living, and cook- ing, takes place here. In foul weather, if there is not high wind, or in excessive heat, a canvas coverilig, on poles, is sometimes spread over the thwarts. This provides some shelter to the oarsmen. It is not pleasant to sleep below decks, as there is little ventilation. The "lower hold" is not actually a hold at all, even of the cramped sort
of the first hold. It is really only the space between the keel and the deck of the first hold. It is approximately an eighteen-inch crawl space, unlit and cold, and damp. This crawl space, further, in its center, rather amidships
and toward the stern, contains the sump, or bilge. In it the water which is inevitably shipped between the calked, tarred, expanding, contracting, sea-buffeted wooden planking, is gathered. It is commonly foul, and briny. The bilge is pumped once a day in calm weather; twice, or more, if the sea is heavy. The Tesephone, like almost all galleys, is ballasted with sand, kept in the lower hold. If she carries much cargo in the first hold, forcing her lower in the water, sand may be discarded. Such galleys normally function optimally with a freeboard area of three to
five feet. Sand may be added or removed, to effect the optimum conditions for
either stability or speed. Without adequate ballast, of course, the ship is at the mercy of the sea. The sand in the lower hold is usually quite cool, and, buried in it, are commonly
certain perishables, such as eggs, and bottled wines. Book 8 pages 19-20
Types of Ships: There are two basic types of ship on Gor, round ships and tarn
ships, also known as merchant ships and war ships. A round ship has a deep hold for merchandise. It is an oared vessel with a heavy,
permanent rigging. It is generally two-masted and the masts are not removable. It
also has more sail than a war ship. A round ship is not round but has a much wider ratio
of its beam to its length of keel, about one to six. A war ship will have a one to eight
ratio. Round ships are slower and less maneuverable than war ships but can still be
used in a naval battle. Round ships differ among themselves considerably. They can be
broken down into three basic categories: light galley, medium class, and heavy class. Tarns ships are also known as long ships, ram-ships, or war ships. War ships have
removable masts. It most commonly sails only with a fair wind. The principal weapons
of the ramship are the ram and shearing blades. The ram in usually in the shape of a
tarn’s beak, shod with iron. It rides just above the waterline. Behind the ram is the
spread crest of a tarn, a shield to prevent the ram from going too deeply into another
ship. A ship is built so the combined strength of the keel, stempost and strut-frames
centers at the ram. Shearing blades are huge quartermoons of steel, fixed forward of
the oars, and anchored into the frame of the ship. The ship slides along another ship
and shears off their oars. Most maritime powers use shearing blades. Tarn ships come
in many different varieties and may also be divided into light, medium and heavy class. Sailors: A Keleustes is the man who marks time for the rowers. He strikes a great
copper drum with a leather cushioned mallet to call time. He can mark a variety of
different types of time, depending on how fast the ship needs to go. He is also known
as the hortator. He reports directly to the oar-master. The oar-master reports to the
captain. Only free men row war ships. Slaves may row on merchant ships. Gorean seamen
recognize ships with the same ease they recognize faces. Women on Ships: The presence of free women on a ship makes some sailors uneasy
and they regard them as bad luck. Free women though do travel on merchant ships.
There are no female sailors. Slave girls on a ship are welcomed. Many ships even have
a Luck Girl, a special slave regarded as good luck. Eyes on Ships: All ships have eyes painted on them, either in a head surmounting the
prow as in tarn ships or on either side of the bow. It is the last thing done to a ship
before it is first launched. The eyes reflect the belief that the ship is a living thing and
needs to see its way.
Seamen now climbed to the high yard, loosening the brail ropes, to drop the
sail. It was the tarn sail. Gorean galleys commonly carry several sails, usually falling into three main types,
fair-weather, "tarn", and storm. Within each type, depending on the ship, there may be varieties. The Tesephone
carried four sails, one sail of the first type, two of the second, and one of the third. Her sails were, first, the fair-weather
sail, which is quite large, and is used in gentle winds; secondly, the tarn sail, which is the common sail most often
found on the yard of a tarn ship, and taking its name from the ship; third, a sail of the same type as the tarn sail, and, in
a sense, a smaller "tarn" sail, the "tharlarion" sail; this smaller "tarn" sail, or "tharlarion" sail, as it is commonly called,
to distinguish it from the larger sail of the same type, is more manageable than the standard, larger tarn sail; it is used
most often in swift, brutal, shifting winds, providing a useful sail between the standard tarn sail and the storm sail;
fourthly, of course, the Tesephone carried her storm sail; this latter sail is quite small, and is used to run the ship,
fleeing, before heavy storms; it is, usually, an "escape" sail; if, upon occasion, a ship could not run before a heavy sea,
it would be broken in the crashing of the waves. Gorean galleys, in particular the ram-ships, are built for speed and
war. They are long, narrow, shallow-drafted, carvel-built craft. They are not made to lift and fall, to crash among
fifty-foot waves, caught in the fists of the sea's violence. In such a sea literally, in spite of their beams and chains, they
can break in two, snapping like the spines of tabuk in the jaws of frenzied larls. In changing a sail, the yard is lowered,
and then raised again. In the usual Gorean galley, lateen rigged, there is no practical way to take in, or shorten, sail, as
with many types of square-rigged craft. In consequence, the different sails. The brail ropes serve little more, in the
lateen-rigged craft, than to raise the sail to its yard, permitting its being tied there, or to drop the sail, opening it to the
wind. On the other hand, the lateen-rigged galley, with its triangular sail on the long, sloping yard, has marvelous
maneuvering capabilities, and can sail incredibly close to the wind. Its efficiency in tacking more than compensates for
the convenience of a single, multipurposed sail. And, too, perhaps it should be mentioned, the lateen rigging is very
beautiful. Book 8 pages 33-34 This galley, one of my swiftest, the Tesephone of Port Kar, had forty oars, twenty to a side. She was single ruddered,
the rudder hung on the starboard side. Like others of
her class, she is of quite shallow draft. Her first hold is scarcely a yard in height. Such ships are not meant for cargo,
lest it be treasure or choice slaves. They are commonly used for patrols, and swift communication. The oarsmen, as
in most Gorean war galleys, are free men. Slaves serve commonly only in cargo galleys. The oarsmen sit their
thwarts on the first deck, exposed to the weather. Most living, and cook-
ing, takes place here. In foul weather, if there is not high wind, or in excessive heat, a canvas coverilig, on poles, is
sometimes spread over the thwarts. This provides some shelter to the oarsmen. It is not pleasant to sleep below
decks, as there is little ventilation. The "lower hold" is not actually a hold at all, even of the cramped sort of the first
hold. It is really only the space between the keel and the deck of the first hold. It is approximately an eighteen-inch
crawl space, unlit and cold, and damp. This crawl space, further, in its center, rather amidships and toward the stern,
contains the sump, or bilge. In it the water which is inevitably shipped between the calked, tarred, expanding,
contracting, sea-buffeted wooden planking, is gathered. It is commonly foul, and briny. The bilge is pumped once a day
in calm weather; twice, or more, if the sea is heavy. The Tesephone, like almost all galleys, is ballasted with sand, kept
in the lower hold. If she carries much cargo in the first hold, forcing her lower in the water, sand may be discarded.
Such galleys normally function optimally with a freeboard area of three to five feet. Sand may be added or removed, to
effect the optimum conditions for
either stability or speed. Without adequate ballast, of course, the ship is at the mercy of the sea. The sand in the lower
hold is usually quite cool, and, buried in it, are commonly
certain perishables, such as eggs, and bottled wines. Book 8 pages 19-20
In those days I learned to master the high tharlarion, one of which had been assigned to me by the caravan's tharlarion
master. These gigantic lizards had been bred on Gor for a thousand generations before the first tarn was tamed, and
were raised from the leathery shell to carry warriors. They responded to voice signals, conditioned into their tiny brains
in the training years. Nonetheless, the butt of one's lance, striking about the eye or ear openings, for there are few
other sensitive areas in their scaled hides, is occasionally necessary to impress your will on the monster. The high tharlarions, unlike their draft brethren, the slow-moving, four-footed broad tharlarions, were carnivorous.
However, their metabolism was slower than that of a tarn, whose mind never seemed far from food and, if it was
available, could consume half its weight in. a single day. Moreover, they needed far less water than tarns. To me, the
most puzzling thing about the domesticated tharlarions, and the way in which they differed most obviously from wild
tharlarions and the lizards of my native planet, was their stamina, their capacity for sustained movement. When the
high tharlarion moves slowly, its stride is best described as a proud; stalking movement, each great clawed foot
striking the earth with a measured rhythm. When urged to speed, however, the high tharlarion bounds, in great leaping
movements that carry I twenty paces at a time. The tharlarion saddle, unlike the tarn saddle, is constructed to absorb shock. Primarily, this is done by constructing the
tree of the saddle in such a way that the leather seat is mounted on a hydraulic fitting which actually floats in a thick
lubricant. Not only does this lubricant absorb much of the shock involved, but it tends, except under abnormal stress,
to keep the seat of the saddle parallel to the ground. In spite of this invention, the mounted warriors always wear, as an
essential portion of their equipment, a thick leather belt, tightly buckled about their abdomen. In addition, the mounted
warriors inevitably wear a high, soft pair of boots called tharlarion boots. These protect their legs from the abrasive
hides of their mounts. When a tharlarion runs, its hide could tear the unprotected flesh from a man's bones. book 1, page 124 - 125
"The institution of Love War is an ancient one among the Turians and the Wagon Peoples...The games of the Love War are celebrated every spring..."
From Nomads of Gor, page 115