Gorean Free Men

What it means to be a Gorean

Taken from the scrolls of Marcus of Ar

In all My many years I have traveled and learned of this Gorean World I have come upon many scrolls depicting what Gor is and how FM should be seen. I have managed to stumble on a page that was written by the Homestone of the Silk & Steel. I owe this whole page to the wisdom of THOSE who wrote it. For each word is direct and accurate to the Scarlet Caste of Warriors in the Land of Gor.

Honor and the Gorean Warrior's Codes

by _Marcus_ of Ar

Of all the five Gorean High Castes, the most romanticized and probably the most often misinterpreted caste is the scarlet caste...the Caste of Warriors. Too many foolish young men seem compelled to pronounce themselves "warriors" simply because they like to think of themselves as dangerous, mysterious and chivalrous. This not only is an insult to those who truly are of that caste, it tends to result in the delivery of many such braggarts to the Cities of Dust by the able hands of those who truly know and follow the codes. To be a warrior is not a matter of owning armaments, nor even having a practical knowledge of the use of weapons. Warriors come in all shapes and sizes, and are found manifested among both sexes, though typically not in equal numbers. For some reason males seem to be more readily able to grasp and practice the basic fundamental concepts which enable one to espouse the Warrior's Code in every day usage. Perhaps this is because men as a whole tend to be more singleminded, more stubborn, and even more sentimental, about such things, whereas women are often far too subtle and pragmatic to dedicate themselves to a single, black and white view of such things as combat, loyalty and honor. Women tend to make the most vicious fighters...but it is the men who seem to be best suited to be Warriors.

Although upon the world of Gor Warrior is a social caste title, in truth social position tends to matter little in dictating who shall be true warriors. Nor does physical size determine who may consider themself a warrior. The fact of the matter is that being a warrior is almost completely dependent upon learning, and maintaining, a specific "mindset" which applies to all things in your life, a set of rules which you strive to live by.

Honor

First and foremost among the traits of any warrior is his honor. It is his singularly most precious possession... once lost or damaged, it can only be regained through rigorous trial or longterm atonement, and sometimes not even then. A warrior's honor is a beautiful, fragile, powerful, and often fleeting thing, and so it is the responsibility of the warrior to maintain it at all costs. The concept of a warrior's honor is difficult to put into words, especially for those who have never sought it or possessed it. It is a highly personal matter.

Perhaps the best way to explain honor is through example, and comparison. The honor of a Gorean warrior is similar in many respects to what some would define as "character." For example:

A Gorean warrior values highly such personal traits as courage, determination, and honesty. He even values these traits when they are manifested by enemies, and will admire and respect such an enemy even when locked in deadly combat with him. Through the very act of engaging in combat, and fighting honorably, with the respect for one who dares to take up arms against him, a warrior acknowledges the belief that honor transcends even boundary lines of caste, city and code. This is character; this is honor.

When all persons in a room defer to the judgement of one individual, due to respect of his wisdom and/or fear of his weaponry, they are, in effect, doing him honor. It is not the weaponry in itself which is feared...without the hand which wields it, a weapon is merely an object, an empty symbol. What makes a weapon fearsome is the certain knowledge that the person who carries it is willing to use it when necessary. When those who meet a warrior know that he is prepared to instantly enforce his decisions and defend his personal code at all cost, then it would be foolish for any to stand in his way unless they, too, have declared such an objective. You may not agree with a warrior, but any attempt by you to prevent him from taking action will have immediate consequences. A warrior is prepared to face those consequences at any time. Others honor his commitment, and take it seriously, whether they agree with it or not. In fearing the warrior, they do him honor.

When a warrior is taken at his word by others, and earnestly fulfills every vow, every promise, every letter of his codes though perhaps none are at hand to enforce his adherence to these things, then, too, he is said to be a man of honor.

When in the course of combat his enemy is reduced by chance or circumstance to defeat, and is stripped of the means by which to die well in service to his codes, an honorable warrior will, if possible, provide his enemy with an opportunity to stand and be counted until the bitter end. This, also, is honor.

It should be remembered that those who disregard honor and behave dishonorably, through lies, treachery, or other such base acts, have in effect abandoned their right to honorable treatment by men (and women) of honor. If identified as being without honor, such dishonorable persons are seldom treated with respect or afforded the right to an honorable end. If an honorable person decides to treat honorably one who literally does not deserve to be treated in such a fashion, then that is something apart from honor... that is chivalry.

Chivalry, also a difficult concept for many to grasp, is similar to the honor codes of the Gorean warrior. However, chivalry is not honor... it is merely an applicable system to enhance the practical dealings of those who possess a highly developed sense of honor. Chivalry is, in effect, a set of rules which govern the dealings of those who possess a certain code of honor with those who are honorable, but weaker, than the chivalric one, and those who are not capable (due to choice, bad luck or unfortunate circumstance) of dealing with the chivalric warrior on equal footing. Chivalry is also deeply rooted in social class structure, and applies primarily to interaction between "peers" or social equals.

Your Word

One of the greatest and most important points of personal honor is a person's word. This is the yardstick whereby personal honor may be measured. Naturally, it is not always wise to tell the truth, and in certain circumstances the unfailing adherence to veracity can cause great complications, the death or injury of the speaker not withstanding. However, there is a difference between always telling the truth and breaking one's word.

A person's word, is, quite literally, his word of honor. Personally, I am just as willing to bend or stretch the truth as the next man...indeed, oftimes "the truth" is entirely a matter of personal opinion and viewpoint. But when a person offers his or her hand to another and "shakes on it", or even simply looks another in the eye and pledges his or her word that something is a certain way, or swears that something will be done, then that is the formal pledge of the swearer's word of honor. If one pledges his or her word in such a fashion and then breaks faith often enough, then in a short time that person's "word of honor" will come to mean nothing...in short, no one will trust that person or take any stock in what he or she says. Excuses do not exist in such matters...if you pledge your word, you had better be telling the truth. If you swear on your honor to do something, you had better fulfill the promise. If that proves impossible, then you had better take necessary steps to remedy the situation. To do otherwise is to lose honor in the eyes of your peers. To lose honor is to lose the faith of those who honor you.

Respect

Another aspect of honor, and a fundamental tool in the use and practice of the Gorean Warrior's code, is respect. Respect is a valuable device whereby honor may be done to another by you, but it is also the means whereby a warrior may maintain his status and indeed his very life, through wise application of this particular concept. A warrior does not like a brace of caged sleen, in fact he probably fears them to some extent. But that fear is not blind, thoughtless terror...it takes the form of respect: the respect for a thing which can do you harm. A warrior might not fear to place his arm in such a cage of beasts, but respect of the animals' abilities and ferociousness, and the certain knowledge that he performs such an action at great peril to his own well-being, will prevent him from doing so. A warrior may honor such a beast with a swift death, or through blood ritual after the hunt... this is simply because he admires the creatures deadliness and strength of spirit. But more than he honors it, he respects it for what it can do to him.

Upon Gor, some castes command, by their very nature, more formal honor than others, but all castes deserve respect within the confines of their own context in Gorean society. The Caste of Builders is a high caste, and is honored by all due to their skill and ability to create lasting and useful works for the use of men. But the Caste of Peasants, though not honored as highly as some, commands great respect, for without the constant agricultural yield provided by those of that caste, many upon Gor would starve. Respect can be a form of honor, though typically a much less public one. A Warrior honors a high ideal or vaunted personage, but he also respects people and things for their value and importance in the grand scheme of things.

Many warriors of Gor do not honor the Great Bow and Crossbow, considering them weapons of stealth and cowardice. It is a part of Gorean culture to admire things which are direct and simple, and this principle applies to personal combat. It also applies to any form of weaponry which removes the user from immediate personal danger during its usage. To remove yourself from danger in such a way and strike your foe from a distance is considered, by the average Gorean, to be an indirect, "sneaky" way of fighting. However, the Warrior who does not respect the killing potential of such weapons, and will not accept their usage in situations which require such things, is not only a fool, he will wind up a dead fool, as will those who follow him.

Dar-Kosis, the Yellow Disease, or "Holy Affliction," is a deadly disease, incurable, which rots the flesh. Although tradition insists that the affliction is a divine one, blessed by Priest Kings, it is in reality a hideous pestilence. Does a Warrior honor such a disease? Of course not...that is for the Initiates, with their incense and prayers to the Sardar. But does a Gorean Warrior respect Dar-Kosis? Of course... he respects it enough to avoid areas and pits infested with the disease, lest he become infected! Respect can be a form of honor, but it does not have to be. It is sometimes just another form of good common sense.

A Warrior respects anything which can harm him or his fellows, or is beyond his direct control. He also respects beauty and skill, as well as any talent and ability which requires time and talent to perfect... the cunning strategic mind of the Master Kaissa Player, the skill of the musician who strums the Kalika, the beautiful and intricate patterns of a delicate tapestry. It takes great skill to throw a spear accurately and far... it takes no less skill for a belled pleasure slave to dance superbly for her Master's pleasure. While a Free Man might not honor a slave, he can certainly respect her talents and well-tuned slave nature. Indeed, this is why Gorean men take female slaves in the first place: Gorean males respect beauty and desirability so highly that they wish to use, enjoy and possess it.

A Gorean Warrior respects anything which can substantially effect him, either positively or negatively. He must measure the worth of each thing in his life, each enemy and friend he possesses, and give them the respect which their importance in his existence earns for them. To do otherwise is foolish. Respect is therefore a system whereby life's every object and occurance can be duly classified and measured in accordance with a Warrior's fears and desires, and once all such is classified, a Warrior may move through his life prepared, knowing that his respect for each thing of importance to him will guide his actions.

Duty

One of the primary parts of the Gorean Warrior's daily life is service, or duty. Service is any act which is performed on the behalf of another...another Warrior, the general of an army, or a free person in need of aid. Duty is the sense of responsibility which compels a Warrior to serve another, and it is also the manner by which he prioritizes such service. To so serve is to "do one's duty" in the classic sense, that is, to faithfully serve the people or institutions to whom one has pledged his service.

The Gorean Warrior has a highly developed sense of duty; indeed, it has been drilled into his brain since he was a young child. He has pledged his service to his Home Stone, to his city or village, to his family, and to the codes of his caste. He considers it his duty to uphold the values of Gorean society, as well as maintain the honor of his caste and caste brothers. He is not a foolish patriot, however...the very codes of his caste insist that he must make his own decisions in regard to such things, that he not blindly accept the rules set down by non-warriors, and that he be careful about who and what he serves. Therefore, it is in the practice of his sense of duty that he defines himself, and in this way the Caste of Warriors, though not allowed to act as a ruling or governing body outside of condition of war, act as the enforcers of the collective conscience of Gorean society. No matter how lawful or well-accepted a policy or law may be, it will not be suffered to exist long if it does not gain the support of the Caste of Warriors. The Warrior caste will only support a cause which is in accordance with the basic precepts of their caste code, and which makes allowances for such concepts as personal freedom, universal fairness, and honorable action. In this way, Gorean Warriors act as the cultural guardians of Gor, seeing to it that those fundamental principles of Gorean society which are so much a part of the warrior codes stay firmly entrenched in Gorean law and custom.

In practice, this is the primary difference between the Gorean Warrior and the Gorean soldier. The soldier will do pretty much anything he is commanded to do, with no qualms. The Warrior, on the other hand, is subject to the codes which make him what he is. While most generals would probably rather have unthinking soldiers under their command, they still must acknowledge the fundamental supremacy of the true Warrior, who is typically a trained expert with several weapons and a fiercely pragmatic fighting man. Not only that, it is the very independent and intelligent nature of the Gorean Warrior which makes him so deadly and useful. Not only will he question foolish orders, but he is usually well-qualified to correct them and implement them successfully. It is a basic fact of Gorean military action that if an experienced Warrior says something cannot be done, it is probably impossible.

When one adds to that the fact that a single Gorean Warrior is probably equal to no less than five soldiers from other caste backgrounds, and that the combat skill of Warriors is universally dreaded by those who are not of the scarlet caste, then it becomes evident that an army of Warriors is a formidable fighting force indeed.

Few leaders would be foolish enough to command such men in a wasteful or honorless manner. In this way, the Gorean Warrior controls his duty; his sense of duty typically does not control him.

Life and Death (Gorean pragmatism)

It is important, when considering the mentality of the Gorean Warrior, to remember that Gor is a deadly place, filled with savage creatures, not the least of which is man. The law of "survival of the fittest" is in constant practice there, and the entire culture of Gor is founded upon that principle. Each Gorean is the result of a culmination of countless centuries of selective breeding, in which the weaker and less adaptive elements of human stock have been culled from the populace, and the strong strain of those who have survived has become the majority of the planetary population. This is actively reflected in basic Gorean philosophy, as well as a fundamental part of that planet's own culture. In short, survival is never taken for granted; the very act of day to day living is prized and much appreciated; and the most ruthless facts of life are brought home to Goreans on a daily basis. Goreans feel that all things which are weak deserve to be enslaved or eliminated, leaving only the proud and strong in their place. Nature supports this mode of thought, and the Gorean Warrior is trained to accept the grim fact of his own mortality from an early age. This situation results in a highly pragmatic view of life in general. Basically, a Gorean Warrior is not afraid to die at any time, in any situation... indeed, he knows it shall happen eventually and expects it to happen sooner rather than later. Each breath he draws is therefore a cause to rejoice! Goreans as a people tend to work hard, and play hard. They do not repress their emotions... such emotions are a fact of life, and it is better in their eyes to accept and experience their emotional states than to waste the time and effort involved in conditioning themselves to repress them.

The Gorean Warrior expects to die at any time... but that does not mean he is looking forward to it. The Goreans have few myths involving the afterworld. They cannot know what lies beyond the door of death, and so few Goreans bother to speculate about it. Because of this view, the Gorean Warrior will do whatever he can to stave off death for as long as he can, provided it does not interfere with the living of his life or his service to his codes. This highly practical and sensible view of things might seem odd or bizarre to those of Earth, but to a Gorean, the detailed myths and legends about paradise and the afterworld which are such a large part of Earth religion and culture are just a collection of unfounded speculation. A Gorean Warrior accepts that which he knows to be true, that which he can see with his own eyes. His gods are the Priest Kings of the Sardar, a real place where no man or animal may enter and return, and when those gods are angry the blasphemer explodes in a burst of blue flame. No speculation is required... the Lords of the Sardar are real, and their existence must be accepted because it is fact. While those of the lesser castes tend to be more fearful and superstitious about things which are unknown to them, the Warrior is not. Such a mode of thinking can only interfere with his committment to his profession, that of arms.

Nor will a Gorean Warrior foolishly throw his life away unless he believes passionately in the cause he fights for. Though it may seem odd that such a cause can be as inconsequential as the use of a road or the sale of a slave, it must be remembered that any such cause has the full weight of the codes behind it. The Warrior in question might not really care about the particulars involved, but he does care passionately about his caste codes and his honor. This is the force which drives him into dangerous situations, and which provides him with comfort as he faces what he believes will be the end of his existence. To compensate for such things, he will immerse himself in the act of living, his use of his slaves, the various joys and beauty in his life... you name it. He drinks hard, works hard, fights hard... because life is hard, and his life will not last forever. Live for today is the primary Gorean ethic, and tonight, let us drink wine.

Gorean Warriors are therefore direct in their actions and interaction with others. To their minds, there is simply no time to waste. This is Gorean pragmatism in action, and like all such manifestations of Gorean cultural traits, it seems particularly evident in those of the scarlet caste.

Gold and Steel (Gorean tactical thinking)

Tactical thinking is a large part of the Gorean Warrior mindset... tactics of thought, tactics of combat, tactics of battle. Most Gorean Warriors will debate these subjects for many ahn, sometimes applying their own personal techniques and strategies to a long session over the Kaissa board. But all in all, despite the many subtle variations espoused by different Warriors from the various cultures and areas of Gor, a single dictum, common to all Gorean Warriors, seems to remain the centerpiece of Gorean tactical philosophy. It can be written as: Do what seems best to you; expend as little effort as possible to achieve the maximum gain; and do not fear to try something new and different, should it seem wise to do so.

A Gorean Warrior will not run his opponent's body through with a sword if the same effect can be achieved by slashing the enemy's throat with a shallow cut. To his way of thinking, it would be foolish to waste the time and effort involved in freeing the trapped blade from the victim's body. The same holds true for such daily activities as shopping for a new slave. Why pay a gold tarn disk for something when the same can be had for the price of a cup of paga? The Gorean Warrior is, as I have already put forth, already counting the remaining time of his life in Ihn... therefore, he is certainly not going to waste time or effort upon something he does not take seriously, or which means little to him. Though Gorean males are often categorized as cruel and callous, it is not callousness which drives them; it is a genuine habit of cutting through all of the unnecessary trappings of life and getting straight to the heart of the matter, that which is most important to him.

Oddly enough, therefore, a Gorean Warrior will often spend a great amount of time mastering a skill, training a slave or other animal to serve him, or even eating a large feast. Though this might seem incongruous to the layman, the truth is that these habits are based upon his hatred of waste, and his determination to spend as little time as possible upon unimportant activity. The way that this works is simple: A Gorean Warrior plans to do something one time and one time only, and he therefore strives to do it completely and correctly the first time he does it. There is nothing a Gorean hates more than repeating an order or action a second time. When given a larma, for instance, a trained Gorean Warrior will eat it. Completely. He will not cease his assault upon the larma until he has devoured every last speck of the fruit's flesh, picked out the seeds from the core, and probably eaten the core as well. He wants to eat a larma, so he will do so in a thorough and correct fashion, if at all possible.

That does not mean he will defer other actions until he is finished with the larma... not if they are pressing on him. He will be as efficient as possible, and then move along to the next task at hand. When cleaning his weaponry, patrolling his city, or instructing his slaves he will be just as thorough. These things give him the satisfaction of accomplishment, and he knows that if he does them correctly the first time, he will have saved himself much wasted time in the future which he would've spent re-doing these things again.

When a Gorean Warrior says "there exists nothing but gold and steel" what he is saying is that when all matters of human existence are pared down to their essentials, these two items are the absolute sum in the equation... the final driving forces whose interaction impacts his life to the greatest extent. A Gorean likes to get down to basics in such a fashion; not only does it remind him not to waste his time on foolish pursuits, it also allows him the luxury of forgetting trivialities and concentrating upon the most important things which currently exist in his life, whether those things consist of leading tarnsmen in an attack on an enemy cylinder or correctly lacing his sandals in preparation for a long march.

In short, he tactically picks and chooses what is most important to him at the moment, and performs each task in front of him completely and to the best of his ability, lest he be forced to pay for any inefficiency later.

Summation

This, then, is my basic explanation of the Gorean Warrior mindset... What is important to him, and how he views his world and that which is in it. When reading of these matters, you have either been nodding your head and smiling in agreement, or you have been utterly baffled. If the mental workings of the Gorean warrior seem inexplicable and ridiculous to you, well, then, perhaps they should... for it seems you are a man of Earth.

But if in reading these things you understood them fully, and if all that is included above seems to you to be like a breath of fresh air in a culturally polluted world... if the ways of the Gorean Warrior are similar to the personal rules and truths which you have always held in your heart, despite the scorn of others...

If that is so, take heart in the knowledge that you are not alone. The disk-shaped silver ship awaits you, and there is a place where others like you are gathering, if you are brave enough to make the journey. That place is in your heart, if you keep it pure enough, if you keep your mind strong enough and your conscience clean enough.

In such a place, a Warrior has nothing to protect him but his own steel and the dictums of his codes. Fear not... it is more than enough.

Perhaps one day on the strange and dirty streets of our world you will pass another Warrior such as yourself, and perhaps you will know one another by the set of your shoulders, the strength in your demeanor and the fierceness in your eyes. Perhaps, if he finds you worthy, he will share with you his own codes, the codes of a Warrior.