Gorean Descriptions
of
Cities / Lands / Waters /Regions

Alars

One popular account  has it that an ancient hero, Hesius, once performed great labors for Priest-Kings, and was promised a reward greater than gold and silver. He was given, however, only a flat piece of rock with a single character inscribed upon it, the first letter in the name of his native village. He reproached the Priest-Kings with their niggardliness, and what he regarded as their breach of faith. He was told, however, that what they gave him was indeed worth far more than gold and silver, that it was a 'Home Stone.' He returned to his native village, which was torn with war and strife. He told the story there, and put the stone in the market place.
"If the Priest-Kings say this is worth more than gold and silver," said a wise man, "it must be true."
"Yes," said the people.
"Whose Home Stone is it?" asked the people, "yours or ours?"
"Ours." responded Hesius.
         Weapons were then laid aside, and peace pledged. The name of the village was Ar." 
Dancer of Gor, page 302

It was near dawn now. The wagon would proceed east on the Argentum road, reach the Viktel Aria, and turn south. Then, in time, it would arrive in Ar. Soon I would be enslaved, legally. I would be, totally, legally, a slave on Gor.Kajira of Gor Pg 263

"Where was the other one from?" asked Tupa.
"Argentum," I said.
"Where is that?" asked Tupa.
"To the south and west," I said. (the girls speaking here are in Ar.)
Kajira of Gor Pg 331

"It is a herd of northern tabuk," said Samos, "a gigantic herd, one of several. The herd of Tancred winters in the rims of the northern forests south and east of Torvaldsland. In the spring, short-haired and hungry, they emerge from the forests hind migrate northward." He indicated the map. "They follow this route," he said, "emerging from the forest here, skirting Torvaldsland here, to the east, and then moving west above Torvaldsland, to the sea. They follow the shore of Thassa north, cross Ax Glacier here, like dark clouds on the ice, then continue to follow the shore north here, until they then turn eastward into the tundra of the polar basin, for their summer grazing. With the coming of winter, long-haired and fat, they return by the same route to the forests. This migration, like others of its kind, occurs annually."
Beasts of Gor

"The waters north of Ax Glacier are ruthless," said Samos. "Send it," I said. "Very well," he said.
"There was something else," I said. "It is nothing," he said. "Tell me," I said. "Here," he said, moving a bit, "here." He crouched over the mosaic where it delineated the sea, an arm of Thassa, crescentlike, extending northward and eastward, tangent upon the polar shores. The sea in this area was frozen for more than half the year. Winds and tides broke the ice, crushing and piling it in fantastic shapes, wild, trackless conformations, the sport of a terrible nature at play, the dreaded pack ice of the north.
Samos put the lamp down on the floor. "Here," he said, pointing. "It lies somewhere here."
"What?" I asked. Nothing was indicated on the map.
"The mountain that does not move," he said.
"Most mountains do not move," I smiled.
"The ice mountains of the polar sea," he said, "drift eastward."
"I see," I said. Samos referred to an iceberg. Some of these are gigantic, pasangs in width, hundreds of feet high. They break from glaciers, usually in the spring and summer, and drift in Thassa, moving with the currents. The currents generally moved eastward above the polar basin. Gorean has no expression specifically for an iceberg. The same expression is used for both mountain and iceberg. If a reference should he unclear the expression is qualified, as by saying, "ice mountain." A mountain is a mountain to Goreans, regardless of whether it be formed of soil and stone, or ice. We tend to think of mountains as being land formations. The Gorean tends to think more of them as being objects of a certain sort, rather than objects of a certain sort with a particular location. In a sense, English does, too, for the expression ‘berg’ is simple German for ‘mountain’, and the expression ‘iceberg’, then is a composite word which, literally translated would yield ‘ice mountain’ or ‘mountain of ice’. ‘Berg’, of course, in actual German, would be capitalized, for it is a noun. Interestingly, Goreans, although they do not capitalize all nouns do capitalize many more of them than would be capitalized in, say, English or French. Sometimes context determines capitalization. Languages are diverse and interesting, idiosyncratic and fascinating. I will generally use the expression ‘iceberg’ for it is easier for me to do so. "There is here an iceberg," said Samos, pointing to the map, "which is not following the parsit current." Samos had said, literally, of course, ‘ice mountain’. The parsit current is the main eastward current above the polar basin. It is called the parsit current for it is followed by several varieties of migrating parsit, a small, narrow, usually striped fish. Sleen, interestingly, come northward with the parsit. their own migrations synchronized with those of the parsit, which forms for them their principal prey. The four main types of sea sleen found in the polar seas are the black sleen, the brown sleen, the tusked sleen and the flat-nosed sleen. There is a time of year for the arrival of each, depending on the waves of the parsit migrations. Not all members of a species of sleen migrate. Also, some winter under the ice, remaining generally dormant, rising every quarter of an Ahn or so to breathe. This is done at breaks in the ice or at gnawed breathing holes. "An iceberg which does not drift with the current, which does not move with its brothers," I said. "Yes," said Samos.
Beasts of Gor

There are tiers of mountains, interlaced chains of them, both east of Torvaldaland and north of her. Ax Glacier lies in one valley between two of these chains. These chains, together, are sometimes called the Hrimgar Mountains, which, in Gorean, means the Barrier Mountains. They are surely not a barrier, however, in the sense that the Voltai Mountains, or even the Thentis Mountains or Ta-Thassa Mountains, are barriers. The Hrimgar Mountains are not as rugged or formidable as any of these chains, and they are penetrated by numerous passes. One such pass, through which we trekked, is called the pass of Tancred, because it is the pass used annually by the migration of the herd of Tancred.
Beasts of Gor

She stood not more than a hundred yards from the gate of Tesius, in the city of Samnium, some two hundred pasangs east and a bit south of Brundisium, both cities continental allies of the island ubarate of Cos....
Mercenaries of Gor Pg 9

...Two aqueducts now brought fresh water to Torcadino from more than a hundred pasangs away, one from the Issus, a northwestwardly flowing tributary of the Vosk, and the other from the springs in the Hills of Eteocles, southwest of Corcyrus....
Mercenaries of Gor, page 101

a political and protective alliance signed by representatives of 19 towns along the Vosk River to promote trade. The members are: Turmuj, Ven, Tetrapoli, Port Cos, Tafa, Victoria, Fina, Ragnar's Hamlet, Hammerfest, Sulport, Sais, Siba, Jasmine, Point Alfred, Jort's Ferry, Forest Port, Iskander, Tancred's Landing, and White Water.
- Guardsman of Gor, Pg. 235

The camp of Ar near Holmesk, incidentally, was situated on, or near, the same site as had been the camp of Harfax two hundred years ago. Such things are not coincidences. They have more to do with terrain, water, defensibility, and such. The land, its fall and lie, wells, watercourses, their breadth and depth, their swiftness, fords, climate, time of year, visibility, precipitation, footing, and such, provide the four-dimensional board on which are played the games of war. It is no wonder that fine soldiers are often astute historians, careful students of maps and campaigns.
Vagabonds of Gor - ch3

There are tiers of mountains, interlaced chains of them, both east of Torvaldaland and north of her. Ax Glacier lies in one valley between two of these chains. These chains, together, are sometimes called the Hrimgar Mountains, which, in Gorean, means the Barrier Mountains. They are surely not a barrier, however, in the sense that the Voltai Mountains, or even the Thentis Mountains or Ta-Thassa Mountains, are barriers. The Hrimgar Mountains are not as rugged or formidable as any of these chains, and they are penetrated by numerous passes. One such pass, through which we trekked, is called the pass of Tancred, because it is the pass used annually by the migration of the herd of Tancred.
Beasts of Gor

...In Kailiauk, as is not unusual in the towns of the perimeter, the Administrator is of the Merchants. The major businiess of Kailiauk is the traffic in hides and kaiila. It serves a function as well, however, as do many such towns, as a social and commercial center for many outlying farms and ranches. It is a bustling town, but much of its population is itinerant. Among its permanent citizens I doubt that it numbers more than four or five hunderd individuals....
Savages of Gor Pg 93-94

Kassau is a town of wood, and the temple is the greatest building in the town, It towers far above the squalid huts, and stabler homes of merchants, which crowd about it. Too, the town is surrounded by a wall, with two gates, one large, facing the inlet, leading in from Thassa, the other small, leading to the forest behind the town. The wall is of sharpened logs, and is defended by a catwalk.
Marauders of Gor Pg 27

The population of Kassau I did not think to be more than eleven hundred persons. There are villages about, however, which use Kassau as their market and meeting place. If we count these perhaps we might think of greater Kassau as having a population in the neighbourhood of some twenty-three hundred persons.
Marauders of Gor Pg 28

The main business of Kassau is trade, lumber and fishing. The slender striped parsit fish has vast plankton banks north of the town, and may there, particularly in the spring and the fall, be taken in great numbers. The smell of the fish-drying sheds of Kassau carries far out to sea. The trade is largely in furs from the north, exchanged for weapons, iron bars, salt and luxury goods, such as jewellery and silk, from the south, usually brought to Kassau from Lydius by ten-oared coasting vessel. Lumber, of course, is a valuable commodity. It is generally milled and taken northward. Torvaldsland, though not treeless, is bleak. In it, fine Ka-la-na wood, for example, and supple temwood, cannot grow. These two woods are prized in the north.
Marauders of Gor Pg 27

The most important thing about Kassau, however, was that it was the seat of the High Initiate of the north. It was, accordingly, the spiritual centre of a district extending for hundreds of pasangs around. The nearest High Initiate to Kassau was hundreds of pasangs south in Lydius.
Marauders of Gor Pg 28

An ancient poet, who incredibly enough to the Gorean mind had sung the glories of many of the cities of Gor, had spoken of Ko-ro-ba as the Towers of the Morning, and it is sometimes spoken of by that name. The actual word Ko-ro-ba itself, more prosaically, is simply an expression in archaic Gorean referring to a village market.
Outlaw of Gor Pg 39-40

Thus when the tarnsmen of Treve came to the grain fields of Ko-ro-ba, which lie for the most part some pasangs from the city, toward the Vosk and Tamber Gulf, they would find her tarnsmen arrayed against them.
Priest-Kings of Gor Pg 62

I shrugged. Much of Gor was terra incognita. Few knew well the lands on the east of the Voltai and Thentis ranges, for example, or what lay west of the farther islands, near Cos and Tyros. It was more irritating, of course, to realize that even considerable areas of territory above Schendi, south of the Vosk, and west of Ar, were unknown.
Explorers of Gor Pg 16

We passed great piles of rough goods, which, later, would be loaded on barges, for transport upriver to Laura, tools, metals, woolens. We passed, too, through goods which had been brought downriver from Laura, and would pass through Lydius, bales of sleen fur, and bundles of panther hides and tabuk pelts. There would be better prices on sleen fur, of course, in Laura itself. Too, from Laura, much in evidence, were great barrels of salt, stacks of lumber, and sleds of stones, on wooden runners, from the quarries to her east. We also saw cages filled with the blond village girls, taken on raids to the north, they too, in their cages brought on the barges downriver from Laura.
Hunters of Gor Pg 44

We were fifty pasangs north of Lydius, which port lies at the mouth of the Laurius River. Far above the beach we could see the green margins of the great northern forests.
Hunters of Gor, page 18

The northern forests, the haunts of bandits and unusual beasts, far to the north and east of Ko-ro-ba, my city, are magnificent, deep forests, covering hundreds of thousands of square pasangs
Assassin of Gor Pg 293-294
 

The forests of the northern temperate latitudes of Gor are countries in themselves, covering hundreds of thousands of square pasangs of area.....It is not known how far these forests extend. It is not impossible that they belt the land surfaces of the planet. They begin near the shores of Thassa, the Sea, in the west. How far they extend to the east is not known. They do extend beyond the most northern ridges of the Thentis Mountains.
Captive of Gor Pg 129

Yet on the trackless beaches, lining the western edge of the great northern forests for hundreds of pasangs, below the bleakness of Torvaldsland, it would not be easy to make rendezvous.
Hunters of Gor Pg 243

We were fifty pasangs north of Lydius, which port lies at the mouth of the Laurius River. Far above the beach we could see the green margins of the great northern forests.
Hunters of Gor Pg 18

Also known as exchange islands, they are administered as Free Ports by the Merchants. Included are Teletus, Tabor, and Scagnar. Others were Farnacium, Hulneth and Asperiche. In the south are Anango and Landa, and in the far north, Hunger and Skjern, west of Torvaldsland. These islands, and free ports on the coast such as Lydius and Helmutsport, Schendi and Bazi make possible the commerce between Cos and Tyros and cities of the mainland.
Raiders of Gor Pg 137

???

A large freshwater port on the Olni River, which is a tributory of the mighty Vosk river. Walled and well defended, it guards the mouth of the Olni where it joins the Vosk. This city is a member of the Salerian Confederation..
Savages of Gor, page 88

Port Kar, squalid, malignant Port Kar, scourge of gleaming Thassa, Tarn of the Sea, is a vast, disjointed mass of holdings, each almost a fortress, piled almost upon one another, divided and crossed by hundreds of canals.......It is, in effect, walled, though it has few walls as one normally thinks of them. Those buildings which face outwards, say, either at the delta or along the shallow Tamber gulf, have no windows on the outward side, and the outward walls of them are several feet thick, and they are surmounted, on the roofs, with crenellated parapets. The canals which open into the delta of the Tamber were, in the last few years, fitted with heavy, half-submerged gates of bars....
Raiders of Gor, page103

???

'The Priest-Kings,' said my father, 'maintain the Sacred Place in the Sardar Mountains, a wild vastness into which no man penetrates. The Sacred Place, to the minds of most men here, is taboo, perilous. Surely none have returned from those mountains.
Tarnsman of Gor Pg 29-30

...The journey itself, overland and afoot from Fortress of Saphronicus to Ti, would take several days, but it was ceremonially prolonged in order that the four tributary villages of Fortress of Saphronicus might be visited. It is not unusual for a Gorean city to have several villages in its vicinity, these customarily supplying it with meat and produce....
Slave Girl of Gor Pg 111

We were not in Samnium, but in Market of Semris. This is a much smaller town, south, and somewhat to the east, of Samnium. It is best known, interestingly enough, ironically enough, as an important livestock market. In particular, it is famed for its sales of tarsks. Too, of course, there are markets here for slaves.
Dancer of Gor Pg. 106

...The governance of Lydius, under the merchants, incidentally, is identical to that of the exchange islands, or free islands, in Thassa. Three with which I was familiar, from various voyages, were Tabor, Teletus and, to the north, offshore from Torvaldsland, Scagnar. Of these, to be honest, and to give the merchants their due, I will admit that Tabor and Teletus are rather strictly controlled. It is said, however, by some of the merchants there, that this manner of caution and restriction, has to some extent diminished their position in the spheres of trade....
Hunters of Gor, page 43

...I remembered her as I had seen her, in the swamp forest, south of Ar, with Nar the spider...
Captive of Gor Pg 368

There were several such islands. Three, which I encountered frequently in my voyages, were Teletus, and, south of it, Tabor, named for the drum, which it resembles, and, to the north, among the northern islands, Scagnar. Others were Farnacium, Hulneth and Asperiche.
Raiders of Gor, Pg. 137

The girls of Clitus Vitellius, I among them, stood at the line scratched in the dirt within the peasant village of Tabuk's Ford, some four hundred pasangs to the north, and slightly to the west of Ar, some twenty pasangs off the Vosk road to the west.
Slave Girl of Gor Pg 152

Tabuk's Ford receives its name from the fact that field Tabuk were once accustomed, in their annual migrations, to ford the Verl tributary of the Vosk in its vicinity. The Verl flows northwestward into the Vosk. We had crossed the Vosk, on barges, two weeks ago....
Slave Girl of Gor Pg 135

In the Tahari there is an almost constant wind. It is a hot wind, but the nomads and the men who ply the Tahari welcome it. Without it, the desert would be almost unbearable, even to those with water and whose bodies are shielded from the sun. I listened to the caravan bells, which sound is pleasing. The kaiila moved slowly. Prevailingly, the wind in the Tahari blows from the north or northwest. There is little to fear from it, except, in the spring, should it rise and shift to the east, or, in the fall, should it blow westward.
We were moving through hilly country, with much scrub brush. There were many large rocks strewn about. Underfoot there was much dust and gravel. On the shaded sides of some rocks, and the shaded slopes of hills, here and there, grew stubborn, brownish patches of verr grass. Occasionally we passed a water hole, and the tents of nomads. About some of these water holes there were a dozen or so small trees, flahdah trees, like flat-topped umbrellas on crooked sticks, not more than twenty feet high; they are narrow branched, with lanceolate leaves. About the water, little more than muddy, shallow ponds, save for the flahdahs, nothing grew; only dried, cracked earth, whitish and buckled, for a radius of more than a quarter .of a pasang, could be found; what vegetation there might have been had been grazed off, even to the roots; one could place one’s hand in the cracks in the earth; each crack adjoins others to constitute an extensive reticulated pattern; each square in this pattern is shallowly concave. The nomads, when camping at a watering place, commonly pitch their tent near a tree; this affords them shade; also they place and hang goods in the branches of the tree, using it for storage.
Tribesman of Gor Pg 71

Whereas salt may be obtained from sea water and by burning seaweed, as is sometimes done in Torvaldsland, and there are various districts on Gor where salt, solid or in solution, may be obtained, by far the most extensive and richest of known Gor's salt deposits are to be found concentrated in the Tahari. Tahari salt accounts, in its varieties, I would suspect, for some twenty percent of the salt and salt-related products, such as medicines and antiseptics, preservatives, cleansers, bleaches, bottle glass, which contains soda ash, taken from salt, and tanning chemicals, used on known Gor. Salt is a trading commodity par excellence. There are areas on Gor where salt serves as a currency, being weighed and exchanged much as precious metals. The major protection and control of the Tahari salt, of course, lies in its remoteness, the salt districts, of which there are several, being scattered and isolated in the midst of the dune country, in the long caravan journeys required, and the difficulty or impossibility of obtaining it without knowing the trails, the ways of the desert....
Tribesmen of Gor, page 208

In the distance, below, perhaps five pasangs away, in the hot, concave, white salt bleakness, like a vast, white, shallow bowl, pasangs wide, there were compounds, low, white buildings of mud brick, plastered. There were many of them. They were hard to see in the distance, in the light, but I could make them out. "Klima," said Hamid.
Tribesmen of Gor Pg 235

...These mines (those of Argentum) were said to be almost as rich as those of Tharna, far to the north and east of Corcyrus....
Kajira of Gor Pg 89

...In that revolution the gynocracy in Tharna had been overthrown, devastatingly. Even to this day women in Tharna are kept almost uniformly as helpless, abject slaves, the men of Tharna having an excellent memory for history....
Vagabonds of Gor Pg 267

The small fellow, I had gathered, might have once been from Tharna. That is a city far to the north and east of Venna. It is well know for its silver mines. So, too, incidentally, is the city of Argentum...
Dancer of Gor Pg 385

Perhaps Treve has never attacked Thentis because she, too, is a mountain city, lying in the Mountains of Thentis, or more likely because the men of Treve respect her tarnsmen almost as much as they do their own.
Priest-Kings of Gor Pg 62

Tor, lying at the northwest corner of the Tahari, is the principal supplying point for the scattered oasis communities of that dry vastness, almost a continent of rock, and heat, and wind and sand....
Tribesmen of Gor, page 36

“This” said the Forkbeard, “is his chamber.” His voice shook. “Torvald, “ said he, “sleeps in the Torvaldsberg, and has done so for a thousand years. He waits to be wakened. When his land needs him, he shall awake. He shall then lead us in battle. Again he will lead the men of the north”.
Marauders of Gor Pg 232

The Torvaldsberg is, all things considered, an extremely dangerous mountain. Yet it is clearly not unscalable, as I learned, without equipment. It has the shape of a spear blade, broad, which has been bent near the tip. It is something over four and a half pasangs in height, or something over seventeen thousand Earth feet. It is not the highest mountain on Gor but it is one of the mos