Camerius
Posts: 742
Joined: 9/5/2006
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Tal Malkinius,
quote:
On the question of Port Kar. It was a city and a Gorean one at that before it had a Home Stone. What it was not was a unified city. It had some variable number of competing Ubars over its existence. It also had, at the time of the books, the Captain's Council which actually ran the city as much or more than any Ubar. It was to the Captains that Tarl presented the Home Stone he created. He did it in the time honored Gorean way of finding a stone, marking it and declaring it a Home Stone and then having it recognized by others. The first to do so was the slave boy Fish.
I still don't see Port Kar as a Gorean city, from it not having a common purpose or value which other cities have by their Home Stone. Please note here that I'm solely talking about the view that the other regional cities have about that place. This leads me to conclude that Port Kar isn't seen AS a city in a Gorean context while it has a governing body (Council of Captains), inhabitants, various businesses and so on, it doesn't have the "soul" of the city, the Home Stone. The inhabitants doesn't see their city as one worth much in the way they behave versus how other Goreans view they own cities. Goreans sees a city or community as a living and breathing entity, it has a value and a purpose, it has a soul and a common bond and one that should be respected or revered. Port Kar didn't have any of this before the following happens;
"And what of Port Kar?" I asked.
"She has no Home Stone," said one of the men.
I smiled. It was true. Port Kar, of all the cities on Gor, was the only one that had no Home Stone. I did not know if men did not love her because she had no Home Stone, or that she had no Home Stone because men did not love her.
The officer had proposed, as clearly as one might, that the city be abandoned to the flames, and to the ravaging seamen of Cos and Tyros.
Port Kar had no Home Stone.
"How many of you think," I asked, "that Port Kar has no Home Stone?"
The men looked at one another, puzzled. All knew, of course, that she had no Home Stone.
There was silence.
Then, after a time, Tab said, "I think that she might have one."
"But," said I, "she does not yet have one."
"No," said Tab.
"I," said one of the men, "wonder what it would be like to live in a city where there was a Home Stone."
"How does a city obtain a Home Stone?" I asked.
"Men decide that she shall have one," said Tab.
"Yes," I said, "that is how it is that a city obtains a Home Stone."
The men looked at one another.
"Send the slave boy Fish before me," I said.
The men looked at one another, not understanding, but one went to fetch the boy.
I knew that none of the slaves would have fled. They would not have been able to. The alarm had come in the night, and, at night, in a Gorean household, it is common for the slaves to be confined; certainly in my house, as a wise precaution, I kept my slaves well secured; even Midice, when she had snuggled against me in the love furs, when I had finished with her, was always chained by the left ankle to the slave ring set in the bottom of my couch. Fish would have been chained in the kitchen, side by side with Vina.
The boy, white-faced, alarmed, was shoved into my presence.
"Go outside," I told him, "and find a rock, and bring it to me."
He looked at me.
"Hurry!" I said.
He turned about and ran from the room.
We waited quietly, not speaking, until he had returned. He held in his hand a sizable rock, somewhat bigger than my fist. It was a common rock, not very large, and gray and heavy, granular in texture.
I took the rock.
"A knife," I said.
I was handed a knife.
I cut in the rock the initials, in block Gorean script, of Port Kar.
Then I held out in my hand the rock.
I held it up so that the men could see.
"What have I here?" I asked.
Tab said it, and quietly, "The Home Stone of Port Kar."
"Now," said I, facing the man who had told me there was but one choice, that of flight, "shall we fly?"
He looked at the simple rock, wonderingly. "I have never had a Home Stone before," he said.
"Shall we fly?" I asked.
"Not if we have a Home Stone," he said.
I held up the rock. "Do we have a Home Stone?" I asked the men.
"I will accept it as my Home Stone," said the slave boy, Fish. None of the men laughed. The first to accept the Home Stone of Port Kar was only a boy, and a slave. But he had spoken as a Ubar.
"And I!" cried Thurnock, in his great, booming voice.
"And I!" said Clitus.
"And I!" said Tab.
"And I!" cried the men in the room. And, suddenly, the room was filled with cheers and more than a hundred weapons left their sheaths and saluted the Home Stone of Port Kar. I saw weathered seamen weep and cry out, brandishing their swords. There was joy in that room then such as I had never before seen it. And there was a belonging, and a victory, and a meaningfulness, and cries, and the clashing of weapons, and tears and, in that instant, love.
Raiders of Gor (Ballantine edition, 3'rd printing 1973) Chapter 16, p.250-251
After this is done, forst then Port Kar becomes a Gorean city. But before that? Nopes, while it was a Gorean city from it being on Gor and inhabited by Goreans, it itself didn't become a *Gorean* city until the above was done. Then it got a value, then it got a purpose.
But, I fully agree that owning a Home Stone don't make you Gorean, as we have people as well as cities that don't have or follows this practice. I however don't agree with your take on Port Kar being a Gorean city before it got a Home Stone. It might have looked like one, but it wasn't one.
I wish you well,
Camerius
< Message edited by Camerius -- 1/28/2010 7:36:32 AM >
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"To Gorean morality many Earth moralities might ask, "Why so hard?" To these Earth moralities, the Gorean ethos might ask, "Why so soft?" Marauders of Gor, pg.8
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RE: What makes you a gorean? - 
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